


From Mountains to Rocks, Oceans to Drops

by Estivate



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: (Can't Believe I Wrote This), (If I Even Get That Far), Angst, Blackmail, Culture Shock, Dark Thor, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Happy Ending, Gangbang, Humiliation, Illusion Fantasy Kinks, Intersex Loki, Jotun Loki, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Mpreg, Orgy, Plot w So Much Porn, Political Hostage, Possessive Thor, Prude to Cockslut, Racism, Sexual Slavery, Slow Burn, War Spoil, filthy filth, heavy denial
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-06-22 09:27:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 46,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15578844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estivate/pseuds/Estivate
Summary: It wasn’t uncommon or even unexpected for the powerful and privileged to keep any sort of leashed apex predator as a pet. Often what made them dangerous to begin with was relinquished upon ownership – defanged tigers or clipped falcons.Loki fingers the golden torque laying heavy beneath his collarbone. That’s what he supposes he is now. It was spelled to him though, and he could not remove it. The craftsmanship elegant, the purpose cruel. With little else to occupy his thoughts he looks at his reflection as the servant works about his hair, plaiting and weaving it above his crown as is customary. She has not brought her gaze down to make contact with his reflected eyes once, terrified at the anger behind them.So.He is to be a harlot.Trussed up and begging for their amusement.





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

When the storm ends, Loki knows the fray has finished. It falls silent like a pall, and then the ancient doors are being thrown open. Footfalls. Ten – no, twelve. 

  
He finishes the prayer with forceful calm, not turning around to meet the faces of their defeat – but he would not cower before nor beg. His stance was regal, and he could hear them approach. 

 

“Your gods are no longer listening.” One walks in front to stand at several steps higher, sword pointed down, but the eyes stare past him, uncaring. Loki doesn’t think much on being able to talk his way out of this one. All the sudden another has gripped his long hair from behind, yanking his head back by the braid and forcing him down on his knees. The fiery pain from his scalp burns and Loki snarls into the face of the swordsman. 

  
He only sneers down at him and spits to the side as intended insult on sacred ground, lowering the blade. “Is this the one?”

  
A female’s voice answers from behind. “The only time you’ll see one of a stunted size I suppose,” And then she’s peering at him through narrowed eyes, “and the markings match as well.” She seemed to be a woman made of tougher mettle in order to be in their ranks, and it showed through her cold, neutral expression. 

  
“Good. I’ve tired of this manhunt. Just our luck that it had to be the last one we came across.” Loki glares at the both of them, but his eyes water from the pain. The blond man sighs, slumping his shoulders and rolling his sword arm. Nodding to the one holding him down. His arms are twisted behind his back as they clap his wrists in enchanted cuffs before being pulled to his feet by a barrel of a man and forced to march. 

  
\---

  
They took him to the main temple hall. Or at least, what had once been such. Giant support columns had toppled and shattered against the floor where greedy soldiers picked at the rare embedded jewels, using their swords and knives to chip away at it. Some held torches near the walls, melting off the intricately carved patterns and stories of their royal line to get at the frosted gold flaked leaf beneath.

 

And at the end of it sitting on the edge of the sacrificial altar with all the legendary arrogance Loki had heard of was the one who could only be Thor Odinson. 

  
But perhaps the greatest indignity of it all was the stolen Casket of Winters reduced to a mere foot rest for the Thunderer. 

  
Hate was an ugly feeling that crawled up his throat as he leered at the Aesir. The Odinson had his head rested on the back of his hand and simply smiled a cruel smirk on what would have otherwise been a handsome face. 

  
Loki tried thrashing against the man holding him in a cast iron grip. Unfortunately, the boor that held him was the biggest of the bulk, and his efforts were that of a child’s. Until suddenly he was discarded at Thor Odinson’s feet and made to kneel at spear point by the guards flanking their prince. 

  
He took a long moment to stare, and then had the audacity to look bored as he spoke. 

 

“Loki Laufeyson. The most worthless of the three. You live only because of your cowardice in the face of battle. I felled your brothers on the field, and you aren’t even half of what they were.” 

 

The two of them now could not have made for a more antithetical pair. The golden prince of Asgard was visibly the consummate warrior, and despite their heights not being too dissimilar, such training that it would entail would never have been an option to him in a land of giants. Loki senses that on this alone, the Odinson might loathe him most of all, and he wonders how painful and humiliating his execution is to be. 

 

“Yet, anything less than what is fully Jotun is perhaps a small mercy.” he mocks. A few of his men laugh at the poor joke. 

  
Loki, in no mood to be humoured, rises slowly to his full height. Dead soon he may be, but he will not die on his knees. He’s weaponless and bound, but trading barbs has always been his preferred form of inflicting damage “And how does the Aesir’s self-righteousness see it fit to take what is of Jotunheim’s if it is so base to you? Our treasures, our home?” Loki spits out. 

  
The Odinson raised an eyebrow as if mildly amused he even dared to speak out. “Such a wretched bleak rock does not deserve the name.” Taking the blackened blood stained crown of Laufey’s, he tossed it into the pile of loot and brought his face closer. “But gold is gold you see. It does not tarnish.” eyes scanning his body where similar items adorned him. It was not much, but Loki has heard of the Aesir’s greed, how they covet and cover everything in it. 

  
Thor stands to where the casket lies, quiet and innocuous, deceiving to those who weren’t aware of its terrible strength. _How could we have lost?_ was Loki’s only disbelief. 

 

When he spoke, Loki heard the admiration in his tone. “My father will be proud to have this in his collection. And no realm shall ever defy Asgard again, not on my rule when tales spread of today.” His fingers brush the side and caresses a handle, but the casket remains inert and unresponsive at the touch.

 

To them it’ll just be a pretty bauble. 

 

Thor approaches and Loki’s eyes flick to his belt and the famed weapon hanging from it at the hip, sure that this was it. He mentally braces himself, the image of his father and brothers’ caved in skulls among the countless dead. “As much as it might please you to hear the sound of your own voice, spare us both with the gloating and be done with it.” 

 

Thor’s hand grips his jaw upwards and Loki’s eyes meet his. This was the sorcerer who had demolished so many of their men: fissures that opened to swallow, avalanches that smothered their fallen, freezing rain sharp enough to slice exposed skin. It took calling in all of Asgard’s high mages to corner him here and now Thor would be the ultimate decider of his fate. This temple’s chamber has seen sacrifices before, his could be the last one before their men toppled it.  

 

And yet it wasn’t quite the face of one he imagined as the villain to this war, so different as it was from the rest. The length of his index finger traces up the jawline, calmly regarding the features of such deadly grace “You’ve cost me a great deal.” Thor takes the opportunity to study the third prince: his face was no beauty, but her close relative allure. In it was the same enticing promise, like the gleam of gems beneath dark water or the curve of a smile before it flashes teeth. 

 

Thor would not fall for it.

 

A sharp hiss and the Odinson yanks one of his horns to force his head back harshly. “So then tell me how to use the casket Jotun, and I can grant you a painless death, or I swear I shall file these off while you scream.” Loki’s eyes are all defiance and contempt, holding the stare and refusing to blink. 

 

Just as suddenly, he lets go, as if he can’t stand to touch any longer than necessary. Loki’s ears are ringing, and it’s the sound of his own manic mad amusement he hears, much to the unnerved faces of those around. Does his laughter make them nervous? 

 

He laughs even harder. Good.

 

Thor’s eyes narrow in annoyance, not one to be laughed at. Behind him he can hear the shift in balance as some of his soldiers move to place their hands on their sword hilts. 

  
“Fools.” He thinks there might be some satisfaction after all, if only to spite them with his last breath. To think they could break the cycle of kings. How vain. “The casket can only be commanded by those of Laufey’s blood.” and lets the grin split his face. 

  
Thor lets out a frustrated blow by his hammer on the column nearest, causing cracks to spider up its length. The expression on his face is dark with displeasure. “Unless of course, you allowed me to demonstrate the extent of the Casket’s might, and I promise you I won’t bring down the walls of this place and bury your men.” he goads, even though it does not bode well for him in his position should the Odinson lose his temper further. That column would not last another hit. And the hall would not last another column less. 

  
“Such insolence,” Thor growls at him.

 

He turns back to the unresponsive casket, hand still gripping his hammer tight. For a moment there’s a keen fear as Loki thinks he might smash it. If that were to pass, he might unleash Winter’s rage on all of them, unbound by the Casket’s ancient magic. 

 

But then his shoulders relax and his head turns toward one of the men that has stood in stony silence all this time. There’s a stretched pause. “A knife.” He orders. The other is quick to comply. 

  
“Hold out your hand, Jotun.”

  
Loki is properly fearful now as a guard wrenches his arm out. His eyes widen in dread, “What are you doing?”

  
The Odinson was before him again, drawing the blade. “You said the blood of Laufey’s.”

  
Realization dawns on him in horror. “Don’t.”

  
“Hold still.” is all the warning he receives at it cuts diagonally along his open palm, where the flesh was most tender. He lets out a pained gasp. 

  
Thor holds the knife above the Casket as drops of blood fall. One. Two. Scarlett. To let drip and flow into the contour tracings, marking the blue in rimmed red outlines. 

  
His mind hesitated in dread for it to be false and the hall was silent in anticipation. It can’t be that simple – it couldn’t –

  
Just then, with barely enough for a cool gust, the unfurling glow of white curls and grows to fill the limits of its casing in reaction, slow as a yawn; it stays alight until the blood cools, and brittles with cold. 

  
Thor Odinson’s expression is that of smug surprise and triumph while Loki’s is numb in denial as he cradled his bleeding hand. There’s a cheer of “For Asgard!” that shakes the damaged walls of the hall’s foundation and he knows that everything is over. 

  
Keeping his gaze on Jotunheim’s ultimate prize, Thor gives the brusque command “Take him.” as he jerks his head in Loki’s direction. Now that the Jotun was rendered harmless and could still be of some use, Thor wonders if he can’t have some fun with him. Dungeons were good and all, but there were other ways of bringing one’s spirit to heel. The Jotun prince had been defiant and self-possessed until what he perceived to be the end, and that just wasn’t consistent with what he knew of their unrefined nature.

 

In Loki’s mind, death would’ve been preferable is the last thought before a guard knocks him out cold.

 

 

\---

 

 

It wasn’t uncommon or even unexpected for the powerful and privileged to keep any sort of leashed apex predator as a pet. Often what made them dangerous to begin with was relinquished upon ownership – defanged tigers or clipped falcons.

 

Loki fingers the golden torque laying heavy beneath his collarbone. That’s what he supposes he is now. It was spelled to him though, and he could not remove it. The craftsmanship elegant, the purpose cruel. With little else to occupy his thoughts he looks at his reflection as the servant works about his hair, plaiting and weaving it above his crown as is customary. She has not brought her gaze down to make contact with his reflected eyes once, terrified at the anger behind them.

 

So.

 

He is to be a harlot.

 

Trussed up and begging for their amusement.

 

They thought him powerless did they. Fine, he’d bide his time, whisper some sweet words. The only real trap here was the indignation of the position, not so much the seal of his magic. He could speak still, pry and bend the rules of this new game until they suited him. That’s what it was, just another game – every game could be beat and he’s beaten them all (save the last one), he’d –

 

The room’s owner returns, “Leave us.” and the servant girl bows low before departing.

 

Loki watches in the mirror as the figure walks up from behind, slowly filling up the frame. His finger comes to tease the earring on his right, gaze catching on all his finery like a dragon who keeps his horde, accounting for every gold coin. Then those hands come up to grip his upper arms, face leveled to his so that they’re side by side. It almost seemed intimate, if not for how tight the hold was. “If you want to live lusciously in my good graces, I suggest you’d best behave yourself.”

 

Loki doesn’t make to move a muscle as his quiet rage keeps him still.

 

Thor continues, undeterred. “Not that I care any longer what happens to Jotunheim, but if you inconvenience me in any way, I will command that planet’s destruction from the Bifrost with the Casket of Winter by your hands.” Loki’s glacial composure falters at the edge of his lips, harsh reality making itself known and settling in his eyes, the smallest degree of red dulled.

 

Thor notices the detail. “Good,” he croons. “Now turn around and face your master.”

 

Loki stands slowly, proudly, but his gaze lingers on the reflected figure, imploring forgiveness. He’s locked in between Thor’s mass and the edge of the vanity but positions himself as gracefully as he can to stand without making contact or backing into the wood.

 

It’s all for naught as Thor hooks an arm around his waist and pulls, closing what little distance he could salvage.

 

Their mouths connect and Thor tests the invitation there by swiping his tongue along his bottom lip. Loki has no choice but to open. His hands rest firmly on that broad chest in silent protest, but stops short of using force. Once Thor is satisfied by the level of compliance, he breaks it off, grins in smug superiority, and Loki fantasizes what it’d be like slapping it off his face.

 

Then the Odinson makes his way towards the bed, dispelling him of his little reverie and making his stomach plunge. This was all happening too fast – it wasn’t even night time yet!

 

Thor talks between divesting his clothes, motions casual as if Loki were merely some willing servant girl he called into his room and not the third prince of Jotunheim.

 

His shirt.

 

“My first order: you are not to directly or indirectly harm anyone here, not merely me.”

 

Next his boots.

 

“My second order: you will accompany me wherever I please, unless instructed otherwise.”

 

Finally his pants.

 

“My third order: strip, and put in some effort.”

 

He then lies down to sink to the soft furs of his bed, large enough to fit a dozen people, but for today will host a show of two. Thor plucks a bunch of grapes from the nearby bowl and waits expectantly while treating himself to the sight. The Jotun cleaned up well.

 

Loki dons his most imperious expression despite the degrading act, hands moving to undo what the servant girl spent an hour or so preparing. The outfit was not overly complicated that he should fumble, not like some of what he’s seen Asgardians wear. Its material was a sheer white, advantaging a voyeur’s view. He takes his time undoing the golden clasps – two at his shoulders and one at the waist. Because of how light the fabric was, it followed where the metal fell, and soon Loki’s upper half could claim modesty no longer. The rest of him held onto what covered dignity it could without going against the order, but pooled like water around his feet when he undoes the final twist around his hip.

 

He breathes in, heart beating. The Odinson’s gaze is pinned and he does not reach for more refreshments. There were more intriguing things to taste.

 

When he speaks the voice is low, laden with lust. “Come here. Turn around and expose yourself.”

 

The torque’s heating metal against his chest spurs his feet to move. He makes his way onto the bed where Thor is reclined, turning around so that his rear was in the air for the Odinson’s perversities. His trembling hands make their way down between his legs and past his flaccid member, hesitating before the end.

 

“Show me.”

 

The humiliation only stalls him a short time before the magic’s insistence forces his index and middle finger to part the lips. In Jotunheim, such a sight was only meant for one pair of intended eyes in a Jotun’s lifetime. And here he was, laid bare in broad daylight for the enemy of his people to see.

 

It would have been preferable if the lecherous prince took his own initiative, but no, he had to force Loki’s subjugation by his own hands. Loki wished for the hundredth time that he could have been slain in the temple where they took him instead of this. Loki’s cheeks were a flushed indigo, heat matching the reddening monstrosity of a manhood beneath him, thickening in interest.

 

A rough hand grasps his left thigh, and it comes out in a growl “Wider.”

 

Loki lets out a soundless sob. He’d give every last bit of gold he had on him for this misery to end, but as is, it merely jingled from his body in soft apology. His left arm does its best to prop himself up while his knees nudge further apart, straining with the effort. He can feel the warmth coming off of Thor’s face, so close it is to his nethers.

 

When his captor deigns to speak again it’s with faint surprise. “You’re a virgin.”

Loki could scream with frustration if he didn’t think it’d make things worse. He could not see what the Asgardian saw, but evidently he supposes his hymen is visible. Oh lovely, if this didn’t just send his captor into a flurry of animalistic urgencies. He’s heard that Asgardians prize virgins among their women above all else, their mead-addled boors fighting for the chance to be a barmaid’s first.

 

However, no matter how sardonically he made the narrative out to be in his mind, the truth was he was scared. Terrified. There was no scenario in this case where he didn’t end up bleeding or crippled for days. He had never been touched, not by another and only rarely by his own shy fingers, before remembering himself. Now to think himself impaled on the Thunderer’s cock. He only hoped he’d black out from it early on to spare him from the worst of the pain.

 

He could not expect mercy from his captor, but voiced it all the same while keeping his words from quivering. “I – “

 

And failing.

 

“I’ve have not yet been had…master. I would speak of your virtues for days to come if you will but be considerate when –“

 

Loki swallows down his next word like one might broken glass.

 

“Coupling.” _Raping._

Silence.

 

He’s spoken out of place, and now he’ll be punished for it.

 

His breath gets knocked out of him when Thor suddenly surges forward and flips him on his back, figures aligned again. There’s a corrupt smile on that face and a glint in his eye. “Aren’t you just full of surprises pet.”

 

Thor ponders. This certainly opens up bold new possibilities. He doesn’t want to make a decision lightly, but it’s hard to think straight with desire coursing through him, dizzying. But a virgin Jotun, oh that was just too good to be true, everyone knew them to be savage beasts that fought as they fucked. Yet the mechanics for this one were likely different, seeing as he was so small, leading Thor to such important questions as: how to best milk the eventual deflowering?

 

“What will you offer me better than the immediate gratification?” He poses, eyes roaming across that cobalt body to stop at ruby reluctant eyes.

 

It pleased Loki none to say it, “I have a talented tongue.”

 

Suddenly an idea strikes Thor. “Use your magic only to conjure the scene in my head.”

 

It was a conditional allowance for the use of his magic. The torque responds in kind, letting him tease out some amount to make this work. He raises his hand to bring against Thor’s forehead, the inner workings of his mind taking shape to color the room about him.

 

And gasps.

 

They’re in Laufey’s throne room again, of castle carved from ice and rock in Utgard’s mountain capital. It had crumbled into the sea when Thor’s never ending storms and lightning ripped it off the landscape like a child tearing a picture, but here it was again in all it’s glory.

 

Thor roared with laughter. Now the potential exploits endless. The pile of furs he had reclined upon becoming Laufey’s throne and Loki at its base between his legs.

“Your mouth.” Thor’s cock was its reddest and fullest. Loki gets to working on its as much as he can, only able to take it in about three quarters, reminding himself to breathe.

 

“Now suck and think of Jotunheim.”

 

Loki gave it a moment and thought best to get it done quickly and thoroughly, and what Loki lacked in experience he made up for with enthusiasm. Thor seized Loki’s hair tight and set the pace which Loki managed to match. His long hair having been so carefully set neatly in place now cascaded about Loki’s face in waves as the pins fell out one by one.

 

He wouldn’t last much longer.

 

Thor had found something precious indeed. Loki was his now, and every day to come. Seeing his exquisite war spoil would have him relive his victory at Jotunheim.

 

His pet glances up to gauge Thor’s expression. Thor loses his rhythm when those eyes meet his and now Loki is choking on his thick cock while his hand keeping him in place refuses retreat. That mouth a texture on him like silk, those blue hands digging into his thigh, and there’s the expression Thor’s been looking for: surrender.

 

He comes thick and hot, his seed spilling out from Loki’s small mouth. “Swallow.” and this time Loki obeys without pause. When he assumes Thor wants nothing more of him, he drops the illusion, hands gripping the fur beneath, knuckles pale.

 

Thor knows he has too much pride in him still to cry, but watches as Loki shuts his eyes against the impending sting of tears. Thor brushes the loose hair behind Loki’s shoulder. “Shh. Soon you’ll learn to beg for it.” in a way that was anything but reassuring to Loki’s ears.

 

Thor cradles that face against his palm and promises. “And then won’t we have so much fun together.”


	2. Chapter 2

In the seemingly endless winter months that saw the final war between Jotunheim and Asgard, Thor had lost countless men to the third prince’s tactics. Before they had closed in on Utgard, their procession had made considerable gains, with the frost giant’s numbers seemingly in retreat.

 

Then the blizzard known as Ymir’s Breath overtook their camps and sent their numbers plummeting. Those without an Idunn’s apple to their own died before the night’s end. Thor still remembered how the giant’s ghost howled his rage across the landscape and when he turned back, he swore he was looking at the face of death itself as tempest incarnate, forevermore chasing the desolation and vengeance of Odin’s line. If Thor had not possessed Mjolnir, he would have died thrice over on those fields.

 

He knew who the one to harness those winds were then, and watching the now-fallen-prince on his knees, collared, and taking him to the hilt was more heady than the most potent mead.

 

The elegant line of Loki’s throat bobbed and extended in practiced motions.

 

It had all been worth it, if only for this.

 

They had been at it for three days now, and every time Thor recalls that he should return to his duties, the hedonistic voice in his head whispers _just one more bout_.

 

Besides, he is.

 

In a manner of speaking.

 

The two of them are attending court – possibly his least favored obligation – and Eirik is voicing his displeasures over another annoyingly finicky matter that was more petty than practical. Oh how he wished he could sometimes spurn certain nobles with his indifference when their automaton mouths opened and closed, and now he could within the confines of their sessions.

 

Every once in a while, when Thor changes his rhythm, Loki loses focus to adjust and the illusion falters so that Eirik ends up repeating a line he had just said. It makes Thor smirk.

 

Tomorrow. Tomorrow he’d take on the mantle of crown-prince again.

 

\---

 

They return to the temple instead, Loki is presented on the altar in the ultimate form of sacrilege.

 

“Do not waste a drop.”

 

His pretty little pet needed instructions on how to pleasure himself, and Thor could make a wonderful mentor in subjects that mattered.

 

Loki was kneeling and fingering his slit for Thor’s rapture. The outer lips were a dark blue while the inner folds dusky pink. Thor wonders if he can’t start commissioning a painter’s services sometime. However, that furious blush, a mix of grudging pleasure and abject disgrace, would be hard to do justice.

 

For as much as Loki would resent his treatment at Thor’s hands, his body language betrayed him. His middle finger now drew from those lips slick threads of arousal, and when enough of it was produced as to go to waste, Loki would have to gather it on his fingers and lubricate his virgin ass. There had been enough to allow two fingers’ entry, and they were making such wonderful progress.

 

Soon, Loki would be ready for him there.

 

Oh, and he was doing all this while verbally composing an epic of Thor’s battle conquests at the same time. The lines were more sarcasm than sincerity, but the meter and rhymes were admittedly witty.

 

Thor interrupts his busy hand to test the waters himself. That cunt was tight and coiling, and Thor intends on saving the best for last. He withdraws his sticky fingers and brings them forward to shove in Loki’s mouth mid-lyric, and Loki understands enough now without needing to be told once anything is put there.

 

Thor was hard long ago and if he were a lesser god, would have come on the spot at that image. “What would your gods say if they could see you now?”

 

And there’s nothing Loki can reply with but to moan indecently at the thick fingers in his mouth and add his own third one in his ass. His poor cock attentive but neglected.

 

An insistent knock on the door causes Loki to pull away and gasp. Thor, unfazed, grants his permission, and that’s how the swordsman Loki recognized from the first day joins them in their domain.

 

“Ah, Fandral.”

 

The man raises a blond eyebrow, shortly followed by the second one once he fully takes in the scene and how they are arranged.

 

“Somehow, I am both scandalized and impressed, and had I not business to bring up, I’d ask for an invitation over slamming the door and running away.”

 

Thor lets out an affectionate chuckle, “Nonsense, this isn’t even the most creative of our debaucheries.”

 

“But it is one of the longest-lasting.” Fandral crosses his arms and continues with a huff. “Thor it’s been six days since you’ve been sighted around the palace.”

 

Thor circles back around to Loki’s raised rear and gives one cheek a light smack for slacking. “I won the war against Jotunheim. Can’t they spare me leave for a week of rest at least?”

 

“No. Just six days will have to do. Your father has bid me summon you and the tone in which he ordered me to do so suggested no…”

 

Loki adds a fourth finger.

 

“Delays.”

 

“Fine.” Thor petulantly puts on his trousers like a toddler told to get ready for the day. Loki snorts under his breath.

 

“Stay,” he commands. “You are not to seek your release until my return.”

 

And Loki is finally alone.

 

\---

 

Odin is in the council room when he arrives, surrounded by maps and scrolls, a few of his ministers in light discussion.

 

“Father, you asked for me.”

 

The Allfather waves the speaker away and regards his heir, one eye ever knowing. “You’ve been busy lately, haven’t you?”

 

Thor shifts his balance like a student caught evading homework before clearing his throat. “I’ve kept mainly to myself. I did not think anyone would take it as offense.”

 

This exasperates his father and he shakes his head. “Has it been amusing then?”

 

“An educational experience.”

 

Odin inspects a map of Jotunheim’s geography, marking certain areas that are no longer extant and others that have been seized.

 

“Thor, you have a right to claim what is yours as wergild, and what you do for entertainment and company is never something I’ve concerned over you. However.”

 

He draws an X over Utgard.

 

“I will only say this. There will come a time when you will have to give that Jotun up. Be done with it by then.”

 

Thor can’t help but feel a little apprehensive. “As you wish father.”

 

Odin motions his hand for another advisor to join him. “That is all.”

 

Thor starts to leave, thinking that his father has lost all taste for fun.

 

“Oh, and Thor, don’t forget about tomorrow’s celebration feast in your honour. You should bring along the evidence of your victory with you.”

 

Thor bows his head in acquiesce.

 

\---

 

The return walk to his rooms was much less hasty, and Thor decides to take his time to regard the surroundings and stretch his legs. He should be more appreciative of Asgard’s climate now that he is finally home. Several common court figures congratulate him in passing.

 

He thinks he’s shaken off the last one when Vikar, one of his father’s high mages, makes towards him despite his stature. If a spider morphed with a hunchback, Vikar would be him. Thor and his boyhood classmates used to make fun of him all the time. However, even stranger than Vikar’s appearance was the persistent rumor that he used to be normal, even fair. Vikar was of mixed blood between Vanir and Asgardian, though one would never know looking at him.

 

They have exchanged few words before, and he’s not sure now why the man comes scampering. “My lord! If you please. I am not as spry as I once was.”

 

Since he’s been called out without plausible deniability, Thor has no choice but to allow him to catch up. “And how may I be of use to you today?”

 

He plays the part of flattery. “Oh but I must also offer my praises to your recent success. Jotunheim was no easy piece of the chessboard.”

 

“No, it was not, but I will remember your contributions and be sure to name them to his Majesty.” thinking that was what the man was after.

 

“Ah yes, thank you, thank you.” The yes being a little too sibilant for Thor’s liking.

 

His father is certainly one for picking out talent, but this one unnerved him. If the rumors were true, then he is right to be wary. He’s never one to trust those who make their trade in sorcery, but only a certain brand of it will distort you physically to this extent as a result of moral repugnancy. He looks down at those thin and gnarled steepled fingers, tapping in turn at the tips together, knowing that he is about to be asked for more.

 

“However, there is a matter of a certain individual in your care…”

 

Thor’s eyes narrow dangerously.

 

Vikar, either undaunted or oblivious, “It’s so hard you see, to come across such a rare and intact specimen of his kind. One of such quality as to even challenge you, my Lord. If I and my colleagues could have the privilege of any amount of time you could spare him, we would be most studious in his applications. After all, it was with our assistance that you were able to cage such a creature. This would be but a small act of gratitude.”

 

Thor barely knows what to say without insulting the man or making a foe out of him, but he manages to grind out “When I can spare him.” knowing full well he never intends on it.

 

Vikar smiles unperturbed. “Your generosity is unparalleled my Lord.” before bowing low and retreating to crawl back under the tunnel he emerged from.

 

Thankfully he was the last, because Thor was in no mood to entertain anyone else’s sycophantic or pleading ways. Upon returning to his rooms, he picks up where he left off, and puts the previous request out of his mind while Loki diligently composes prose while bringing himself to the brink.

 

When Loki simultaneously orgasms with a stifled shout on the altar by his hand and Thor’s, their ceremony completes.

 

\---

 

Thor has to pull out all the scented oils in the baths to clear himself of the smell of sex and effluvia that seven days of excess will lend to a man. His mother will be in attendance today, and Thor’s never quite grown out of the vestal aura she projects every time he sees her, and takes a care not to befoul it. Loki too, is having his long hair lathered and perfumed for this night: a formal banquet.

 

Loki, at the opposite end of the bath’s limits, keeps the lower half of his face underneath the water’s surface and blows agitated air bubbles throughout, unhappy when Thor told him he is to keep their cups full at the high table during. 

 

Yes, his little Jotun was perhaps a bit touchy with these things still.

 

The servants dry them, and lead them towards the freshly aired quarters.

 

Loki is prepared first, since Thor’s own personal servants have optimized their servicing of him, not to mention Loki is as stiff and uncooperative as possible, but eventually they get him in garb.

 

Never mind the banquet, Thor’s had them at regular intervals since he could attend. Loki is much more a feast for the senses, and makes himself known by pacing across the room a few times so as to get used to the sensation. It wouldn’t do for him to trip over the train at any point during the night.

 

Thankfully, it did not take so conscious of an adjustment since it suited how Loki walked naturally, albeit motions extended. To avoid tripping on the trail and carry proper the mass of fabric on turns required long strides and sharp pivots at his hips and heels. His eyes follow the ankle up that limb to drink in the rest of the sight.

 

Thor’s an expert at picking out shades of red by now, having gone through so many cape fittings. Loki’s robes were made of the same thick and lush velvets, decorated with sinuous gold thread at the collar and cuffs. The fabric’s weight made for voluptuous, sweeping folds but left room for airy walking by the side slits exposing leg. It also had the effect of pulling his spine to its full length and elevating his profile as to show off his neck, and finally, those sleeves tapered before flaring at his wrists, accentuating his hands.

 

Yes indeed, Thor would very much like to see him in it again, beyond this night.

 

His annual allowance had a handsome chunk depleted for the wardrobe Thor commissioned, but the royal tailors were the best in the realms and Thor cannot bring himself to regret the purchases.

 

Thor is now dried and naked. And hard.

 

But that doesn’t mean they can’t continue to get ready.

 

The servant girls prepare him from the top down, fluffing his hair and adorning simple braids. Then they get to work on the silver scales that cover his arms – that was always the most time consuming.

 

Loki is sitting down in a rare moment of distraction and calm, chin resting on his hand while the other sways to and fro against a small patch of velvet. Thor motions him over and Loki sets the fabric straight before coming with an expression on his face that says “ _Well?”_

 

“We have time.”

 

“Does your member never wilt?”

 

“I’m not only the god of thunder.”

 

“Tsk. No propriety.”

 

“Don’t make me command you.”

 

And with that Loki slowly sinks to his knees, carefully spreading out the robe so that he doesn’t wrinkle them.

 

To the servant girls’ professionalism, they keep their eyes lowered and don’t say a thing while continuing to work. Loki for his part, soundlessly takes him in his mouth and sucks him off.

Thor knows he will be intoxicated before he even gets to the hall.

 

He can’t take in hand any part of Loki’s hair as he so often does since doing so would scramble the delicately laid knots and loops. In them too are the new set of combs and pins capped with agate stones, glinting so flirtatiously in the light. 

 

Thor comes embarrassingly early compared to how long he usually lasts, and Loki cleans him up in one gulp just as the servants are about to finish their handiwork. Thor’s trousers are the last item.

 

Then they depart for the night’s festivities with Loki following closely behind.

 

\---

 

When they enter, there’s a raucous cheer, followed by excited whispers. All the other guests at the high table have taken their positions and when Thor joins their ranks, they are seated in unison.

Odin Allfather’s voice, clear and commanding, breaks the din of noise.

 

“My warriors, tonight, we dine in celebration of your journey home. They said never to invade Jotunheim in winter, but now it has been done, and in the history books it will be written. My son,” Thor he gestures to with a sweep of his arm “has given you the grandest of victories Asgard has ever seen, and after tonight, no feast will be grander until you arrive in the halls of Valhalla herself.”

 

The tables go wild. “All hail!”

 

Blessedly, the speech was short, else Loki’s eyes would have rolled over into the back of his sockets for how the great and mighty Odin Allfather was to lord over his victory in a campaign he didn’t lead.

 

The music starts, and a bevy of servants enter, carrying with them dishes of such craft and spices as to even entice Loki, ever the particular eater. But no, he would only have the taste of bile on his tongue this night as a sophisticated decanter of wine is placed in his hands, reminding him exactly of why he was here, and in a setting like this, there were far too many eyes on all sides for him to put up a fight.

 

The Allfather and his queen sat in the centre, while Thor and his friends to her left and Odin’s most esteemed generals to his right. He filled Odin’s cup first, all the while catching himself being observed by that one skeptical eye. Loki keeps his composure so near to his oppressor, but there was no ignoring the power that exuded from him, just as it did Thor, but tempered and refined with a millennia of rule. Queen Frigga was easier, her presence a glowing radiance created by the encrusted refraction of topaz that covered her neckline. The ends of her mouth tilt up in a secretive smile, and Loki is reminded of the fact that she is a seer. What that smile bodes for him however, he cannot know.

 

She was beautiful, but unknowable. Loki wonders how in the Nine a pair such as Odin and Frigga have remained together, but power calls to power, and that he can understand.

 

Thor and his friends are a standard lot.

 

Fair, dark, slim, fat, quiet, loud, blustering, reserved. All admiring as they encompassed Thor as one turns towards the sun. He watches their interactions and it seemed alien to him how Thor treated them with respect and equality that was genuine and freely given.

 

Loki is given no introduction whatsoever, and leaves to serve the other side.

 

The right side of the table is much more serious. They are older and regard him with open prejudice. They are all hardened from various different wars, and it brought them satisfaction to be waited upon from a conquered kind. Loki serves them with an indifference bordering on haughty and quietly hopes they don’t drink to their fullest.

 

The man to his right with a scar above his eye downs his in one.

 

This was to be a long night.

 

\---

 

Thor’s side of the table is much more preoccupied in conversation than they are in their meals. Meaning Loki consequently is called upon mostly to those that are less kindly served. They take their subtle digs at him, either speaking loudly about unfavorable treaties, or even worse, provoking him in small ways that go undetected.

 

Loki almost spilled the amount he was pouring when a hand travelled up the slit of his garment to steal a fondle. He could only tip the flask deeper so the liquid filled faster before slipping away.

 

Another whispers vulgarities at a volume only he can hear “Is it true that Jotuns possess both sexes.” to which he retorts, “Is it true that Asgardian women never reach completion?”

 

He’ll get in trouble for talking back, but only if he’s overheard.

 

Silently he goes to make the rounds at Thor’s end, quietly mortified at exactly just how much the man can eat. If the goal is to finish all the food and not merely to have surplus for show…well, then they’ll at least gorge themselves to Valhalla.

 

Roasted game, mouths decoratively stuffed with apples remain steaming on their golden platters. Breads of every texture pile loaf on loaf for a table end to end. Exotic fruits of all assortments ripe and round to burst lend their saccharine flavours to an air that was beginning to ferment, thicken, and swarm. 

 

The dishes are high, the Asgardians jolly, and the cups deep.

 

So he continues to suffer their nuisances.

 

\---

 

As they continue to guzzle drinks down their gullets, their inhibitions dissolve and Loki is being pinched and prodded by the impertinence of those who so call themselves fully-grown men. Loki thinks back to when he was still involved in the war and hopes with vindictiveness that any of their sons or soldiers met their deaths at his stratagems.

 

Thor had grown surly and seemed to be tiring. Loki tries to indicate to him that any time now would be good to leave, should he only wish it, but is suddenly gathered into the lap of general so-and-so, who had once done this-or-that, wanting such-and-such, but what Loki _did_ catch was him drunkenly asking if Thor was willing to share.

 

And oh, how convenient that the Allfather would like a refill now too.

 

At least the head of the royal family has not lost his wits yet. Loki fumes internally, but keeps his hands steady. Then, before the goblet is even two-thirds full, Odin draws it away and a non-insignificant amount stains the tablecloth.

 

Loki can’t believe the pettiness.

 

Too stunned to even pretend apology at what was so obviously deliberate.

 

“Thor, you ought to discipline your servants better.”

 

And Thor is up on his feet, hands slamming on the wood. “Yes father, I’ll see to it right away.” voice muted and furious.

 

In a way Loki got his wish. He just didn’t think he’d be forced to leave being yanked at the wrist for it.

 

They exit in a hurry, undignified and flustered.

 

Thor’s brisk pace is difficult to keep up with when Loki’s train drags so heavily behind him. He bunches up the fabric at the front with his available hand and is wrenched towards Thor’s rooms.

 

They pass through the south wing, the night sporting a perfectly pleasant moon in the sky, indifferent to his predicament. A pair of patrolling guards eye each other nervously as Thor shoves past them, and once they’re out of sight he throws Loki against a pillar.

 

“Explain yourself.”

 

Loki catches the breath he needs to do so first. “He intended on making a fool of me.”

 

“As if you weren’t so ready to be made a fool of.”

 

“Next time I’ll specify him to hold still beforehand, but I suppose even the mighty Odin Allfather flounders like a senile simpleton on occasion.”

 

“No. I meant how you whored yourself to his generals the entire time.”

 

Loki blinks and his brain hurts with the absurdity of it all. _That’s_ what Thor was angry about?

 

He uses a voice that he might towards a child, “Thor, you’re drunk.”

 

“And you have yet to explain.”

 

Loki stamps his foot. “You’re right. I should much rather pour wine at arm’s length, stiff and rigid so that I can’t even see over the rim of the cup!”

 

He pushes off the pillar to pull himself up to Thor, angry and exasperated. They both breathe in heavily the night air. When Loki reared in so, he didn’t think it’d bring their lips so close – he can see the red flush of Thor’s cheeks, smell the wine on his breath.

 

“No, from now on you shall serve only me. You may be a whore, but you’re to be my whore.”

 

Well, that answered _that_ question, about the sharing that is. Thor forces him against the ledge, cock furious and firm. Do no Asgardians understand such a thing as _a-time-and-place_? Loki trains his voice to be demure “Master, our rooms are just another section away –”

 

“ _Now._ ” he snarls.

 

Then the torque’s magic is forcing his hands to free Thor from his breeches, no need to coax.

 

“Make true what I desire.”

 

Oh why couldn’t Loki have the power to push Thor’s face away instead, but his hands perform what they will.

 

Thor twists him around and kicks his legs apart, and what was night is now an artificial day with false masses of people outside to witness. Thor leans over him from behind and whispers into the shell of his ear, “You’ve been preparing yourself so well for me, now let’s see if you can take it.” He was going to claim that tight ass here and now.

 

That peacock’s train that had been so good for marvelling was now in the way, but Thor manages to find that hole. He spits into his hand and works a knuckle into that ring of muscle. His other hand having snaked its way to Loki’s front, fingers latching in that snarky mouth. “Suck.”

 

He does so while Thor prepares him impatiently but sufficiently: stretching him open finger by finger until it’s ready. Finally, he lines himself up and pushes.

 

Then.

 

To Jotunheim and back.

 

It is nothing like Thor’s fingers. Loki’s mind completely freezes at the intrusion and gasps for any air to replenish what was forced out. His body resists instinctively, while Thor – what small mercy it is to still be able to detect these things through a haze of red lust – pants with the restraint necessary not to just take him completely.

 

He eases in with what’s considered a bearable degree at a time, and Loki merely feels like he’s going to die as opposed to actually dying.

 

A heartbeat, maybe fifty, after Thor has fully sheathed, the burn begins to melt him from the inside, giving way to the start of pleasure. It still hurts, but now Thor is shallowly rolling his hips, and as unbelievable as it is, his channel has conformed.

 

Loki starts breathing again lest he faint.

 

Then that fullness blooms, and Thor starts to move in earnest. Loki keens his need in response.

 

At some point Thor must remove his other hand from Loki’s mouth so that he can better grip those slim hips, fingers sinking into the red velvet, bringing that rump down as he pumps. And Loki is so far gone that he can do nothing but wail in time with the rhythm.

 

Maybe he is too inebriated, or maybe Loki is losing hold on his spell because the scene before him is swimming and Thor can barely believe the height of the crest he’s on.

 

He comes with a roar, hips snapping with finality. Thor decides he will endeavor to live a long life, staving off Valhalla’s invitation, because surely, no greater pleasure existed.

 

The lights behind his eyelids flash white with pressure. Thor opens them to blink at the illusion, committing it to memory.

 

Loki was his and his alone, and all of Asgard ought to know it.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marks down for Sunday: attend church. 
> 
> Comment if you enjoyed, or even just to discuss more porn~


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So much bondage imagery.

On that fateful day, as his father’s army departed for what would be their last battle, Loki had not said his goodbyes – did not think he had to.

 

It would be a final confrontation, and they were ready. The ease of their foe’s numbers after Ymir’s Breath had whittled the Aesir army down to a feasible size, logistics and all. The opening of this war had caught Jotunheim off guard, but Loki had been controlling the tides ever since with his remote abilities. Why waste muscle when you could harness the elements.

 

That being said, the Aesir were a hardy sort and their advantage, while true, was not one to be taken lightly. Loki meant to finally be able to cut them off here and be done with it.

 

He saw through his father’s eyes the Aesir banner on the ridge of the plains and waited for them to concentrate the rush. Thor Odinson lead them, always delving head first with brute force. The slate grey skies stirred violently before a shot of lightning illuminated their regiment and Loki took in a breath where he was scrying, drawn to the figure that had slipped through his clutches at every turn of this battle. He had been magnificent, and now was the last time Loki would lay eyes on him.

 

It was too bad they were on the opposite sides of the war this lifetime.

 

Father never did appoint a delegate to Asgard, but then the fates weep for no one.

 

A crack of thunder inevitably followed, and it had shook the sky and earth so loudly that the dome of their heavens sounded like it had split down and cracked open, signalling the end.

 

The ringing in his ears abated just as their warhorses ripped down the slopes.

 

And Loki was ready to finish them.

 

But while he was focused on the enemy at their door, the enemy atop Yggdrasil’s branches was focused on him. Metaphorical manacles lashed out from the dark and caught his initiation, and before he could even bring his hand to undo the bondage, his other one had been caught too. The chains strengthened in hold and numerosity until his actions were completely paralyzed in the darkness of the ether.

 

The last thing he senses is Laufey’s sharp anxiety: concern for is youngest, his smallest.

 

The last child Farbauti ever bore him.

 

The connection snaps and Loki is on his knees screaming to an empty hall.

 

His father and family had died then and there, and yet Loki is relieved, relieved because in death they will never know of his current disgrace. For the night was not yet through and the Odinson was…

 

Virile.

 

After Thor took him on the corridor balcony, Loki had been broken in, but not broken. He slumped at his feet after Thor pulled out, staggered up on legs as shaky as a fawn’s, and Thor made the decision that it was easier instead to simply bridal carry Loki the rest of the way.

 

In a parody of a lover’s union, he had laid Loki on the furs and stripped the garments for the both of them. The scarlet robes that Thor had so delighted seeing him earlier in were forgotten and pooled as blood by the bedside.

 

And Thor’s blood, while no longer boiling, was still at a simmer. By the time Loki was undressed the man was hard again and Loki groaned internally, _did it never end_?

 

However, this time Thor was much slower in his ministrations, eager to prolong than to proclaim.

 

Yet still they had an audience, because of course.

 

It was a consummation bedding ceremony, the kind where political doubt had to be assuaged among high ranking elites on occasions of matrimony.

 

Did all five of Odin’s generals need to be there when just one trusted witness would do? Of course not.

 

Did Thor want them there for good measure? Yes.

 

Separated by the diaphanous curtain, they sat beyond the foot of the bed, desires mocked and checked. Thor gloats his carnalities to men that were always referring to what Odin would do, as if he were an exact replica of his father they wanted him to impress upon, but to go so far as to stake a claim to what was his through victory alone, that had been too much.

 

So Thor takes him languidly, and since his hole was so full of previous spend, the entrance stayed slick and ready.

 

By Thor’s dexterous hands, Loki is able to find arousal and release twice more, but his body is quickly wrung dry while Thor continues. Every time Thor thinks he is at his end, those blue lips are parted and panting, and Thor forces himself down from that pinnacle just for the purpose of reaching it again.

 

He grunts and drives into him on repeat, motions almost as if in a trance for his mind has left him and the whole of his world collects on that orifice. His senses are still murky but the play of fire light on Loki’s skin is mesmerizing. Those hands and eyes move of their own volition to map the contours of his house.

 

Thor’s orgasm bursts from him when he can no longer keep it contained, body collapsing on top of his thrall’s, and Loki finally lets his mind fall towards oblivion.

 

As the illusion scatters, Loki catches the vague light of dawn before his eyelids slip shut.

 

\---

 

Thor wakes to the sound of knocking, throat dry and hungover, and makes to answer whomever it is without stopping to dress in any capacity.

 

Fandral, again.

 

Why did his parents always send him especially? Right, Volstagg was married and not as regular of a figure in the palace, and as for Hogun and Sif, well, they were not as accustomed to the sight of Thor naked and shameless as much as Fandral was.

 

Thor grimaces “Is it father?”

 

“No actually, your mother.” he quips, as if nothing in the world was wrong with his friend’s unsustainable immoralities these days.

 

That was infinitely worse if now his mother had deemed it worth intervening.

 

“She invites you to afternoon tea with her but wants to let you know that you may make yourself properly presentable first.”

 

“Good, that’ll give me an hour at least.”

 

It was fairly amusing, to see the normally magnificent Thor in such a frazzled state. “Yesterday was the feast, and so a recovery period from the revelry is understandable, but Thor.” and Fandral’s gaze flicks over to the interior where the bed was a mess. “Do understand that they miss you.”

 

\---

 

His mother’s chambers are as ethereal as he remembers them, situated as they are in from the gardens. Time stood still here as pollen in air, and Thor wonders how he ever grew up at all when before the Queen, he would always be the child he was.

 

A child who has to look his mother in the eye after last night’s acts, but a child nonetheless.

 

There’s a table for two set with tea and a tower of cakes and sweets, all of them his favourites. Frigga rises to embrace her son. Her ambient beauty was one of pure chastity and yet she was the goddess of creation and family. When Thor meets in her arms, he is purified by her presence once more.

 

She bids him sit down and her servants pour the tea. “I did so much want to speak with you more at last night’s banquet, but I know your friends hold you high in their hearts, so I let you occupy theirs a little longer than I should have.”

 

He feels a little guilty now that she mentions it, but those eyes are blameless and full of joy.

 

“And you? You’ve come back to us healthy and whole, and as a mother that’s all I had hoped for.”

 

It was easy now, being back on Asgard, to forget about the viciousness of Jotunheim, but for some reason even as he saw his men fall or freeze to their deaths, the fear of the same thing happening to him never penetrated as much as the cold did in his marrow. In some, fear lead to desperation which fed back into fear, but in Thor it had given him purpose. The truth of the matter was that he wore destruction like a glove, and was too defined by it to fear the knife’s edge.

 

Life at home was pleasant, but it was that same danger he courted in keeping Loki that thrilled him.

 

“Keeping Asgard safe is foremost by birthright. If I had died doing so I would have died happily, but as I returned victorious, I am even happier.” A warrior’s words through and through.

 

“One day Thor, when you are a parent, you might not feel the same way. What I wouldn’t have given to see peace with Jotunheim instead.” her eyes lowered while her face dipped to drink. After she sets her cup down, they wait until it is as if the liquid returns to equilibrium.

 

“And your servants? Are they able to keep up with all that you require?”

 

He thinks of Loki being able to take his cock up his ass and tries not to turn red. “Yes.”

 

“I think I remember them being all young maidens.” Frigga places a finger to her lips in idle concentration. “But when a lady reaches a certain age, she no longer likes being surrounded by those much younger than she is.”

 

Thor takes her hand in his and kisses the back of it. “There is none to surpass you and never shall.”

 

She gently laughs at him in delight.

 

“My handmaidens have been with me a long time now, and I endeavor to give them a good living, to treat them as I would my own. Since I have selected but a few, they attend to me all hours of the day, but it must be hard for them too, being so far from home and family to do so.”

 

Thor knows she is not talking about his servant girls at all, though he supposes he could afford to behave as befits a prince a little more in their presence.

 

They continue to trade small pleasantries, each with a deeper meaning than Thor wants to take in at the moment. When the tea is done she shoos him away, complaining about how older women needed more time to themselves as the years went by.

 

\---

 

Thor returns through the gardens and walkways, mind going back to the events that transpired before the sobering cast of daylight. He had not been so drunk as to completely forget himself, and oh what a pity it’d be to do so, but he was neither as attentive as he usually prides himself on being and feels a twinge of guilt.

 

Loki was proud and devious, but not the sinister viper Thor made him to be. He wonders how much of that is because Loki is under his direct control, and how much of it is because they are no longer warring at each other’s throats. So often in their throes there were moments ranging from levity to satire, and it drew him in more than the beseeching of ladies or maidens that begged him to love them most of all ever did.

 

When Thor returns, Loki is still buried in the furs. He had reached to awaken him but stopped himself for the crime it would be.

 

Loki somehow looks sinful even as he sleeps.

 

This isn’t the first time Thor has fucked a partner to exhaustion, but then he recalls that between the banquet and all of last night, Loki has not had a bite to eat or drink in between, and quietly orders a servant to bring them something appropriate. 

 

When she returns with his request, Loki has not yet stirred.

 

\---

 

Once he does, those eyelashes flutter open and his Jotun pushes himself up on one arm, eyes searching.

 

They land on Thor soon enough and he is looking at him, inquisitive and composed. By the amount of light remaining and the slant of shadows, it is late afternoon, but Loki still feels winded. His legs feel wooden and when he tries to move, he winces instead.

 

“Let me see.” he orders, as candid as a midwife. And the torque’s magic does more to spread his legs than his aching muscles.

 

For the first time ever, Thor merely touches him clinically. His calloused fingers travel down to test the breached opening: there was no tearing, but he would be sore for a little while.

 

Thor has no interest in pillaging beyond repair and so lets those legs go.

 

“You should eat to replenish your strength.” and though the should meant optional, the intent meant mandatory.

 

“These coming days I will leave you to yourself. I’ve shirked my duties long enough and any longer will be seen as negligence. You are to keep to the south and west wings of the palace, and all I require is that you return to these rooms before attending to me during dinners. Any questions?”

 

Loki takes a bite of bread “None whatsoever.” His leash was still short, but at least it had lengthened. Loki was starting to worry that he really would be chained up in the Odinson’s bed for the rest of his life.

 

He continues to eat enough to satisfy, and then draws a bath. He had not yet cleaned off the fluids seeing as how Thor collapsed on top of him and then he had proceeded to sleep even longer than he did.

 

In the obscurity of the water, he fingers himself impassively. Come leaks out of him in gradual clenches. It turns the opacity a milky white before he dissipates it with a wave of his hand.

 

\---

 

It’s a small degree of improvement and Loki is now able to walk without a limp. What he wants most – the library – is off limits to him in the east wing. He scopes out less busy sections and alternate pathways in between. Those that come by him stare openly, sometimes in curiosity, more often in revulsion, but, while Loki cannot bite, he can still bare his teeth.

 

Thus largely, he is able to wander unsolicited.

 

Thor’s chambers occupy most of the south wings, and outside it meets the edge of the garden grounds. Loki can’t go outside yet, but he longs to see greenery of a kind that has never been afforded at home.

 

The west wing is where many of the classrooms are situated, teachers for royal and upper class elites broken into multiple age brackets and subjects. When Loki listens in from the outside, a gaggle of youth learning history does so through curated propaganda. He leaves when they start talking about the recent war with Jotunheim.

 

Like this Loki soon expends what bit of enthusiasm he had on what was available, but the alternative of staying put in Thor’s rooms makes him feel like even more of a prisoner.

 

The torque’s bind doesn’t relent any: it’s a combination of Thor’s literal wording and the intent behind it. If the two did not exactly match, then Thor’s intent would override it, and if two pre-existing statements contradicted, then the most recent one would prevail.

 

Currently he could still not use any degree of seidr unconditionally, and he had no physical defenses.

 

He just needs to be vigilant. He knows what it feels like now when a knot of control loosens – he just needs to last long enough to take advantage of it.

 

As is, the place he frequents most are the kitchens.

 

Because he lacks formal rank to be able to order servants, when he wants food, Loki needs to personally get it. The cooks and workers there were surprised by his presence: flour and oil no place for satin and sable. However, they can spare him no attentions because of the constant rush, and Loki finds that so long as he does not impede, they allow him what he wants.

 

Working in a kitchen is an honest living, so long as no one tries to poison another, but Loki notices a child at the scrubs and sinks, and she wouldn’t be here if she had a normal family. She was either an orphan, or, even more likely, the abandoned child of some extramarital court affair. Such children rarely had any formal recognition, but because they were of the palace, they were also lost to it in the anonymous donation for menial labor.

 

His jacket is criss-crossed with a lattice work of gold thread, each point of intersection marked by a pearl. Loki plucks one of them from the spot beneath his wrist where its absence would go unnoticed, and then does the same to the other sleeve, so that the jewel could be paired.

 

He grants them to her and she’s more captivated by their lustre than by their value, but then she can keep at least one and sell the second.  

 

One day, on his trips from the kitchens he comes across a stranger.

 

There’s a figure leaned up against the narrow hall he has to go through, arms folded and head down. Loki tries to pass him without acknowledgement until a foot stops him on the hem of his gown.

 

Not willing to give this knave the satisfaction of having him tug it away or trip lest he take a step further, “That fabric costs more than your earnings this year and the last. I suggest you remove it before I ask for recompense.”

 

The man chuckles in shallow amusement. “They said there’d been a little frost giant wandering around here lately, and that he is as much spitfire as ice.” unfolding his arms.

 

He steps away to regard Loki from the front, now in the way unless Loki defers to him.

 

Like Hela’s tits he would.

 

“I enjoy this route for the solitude and quiet, both of which you’ve interrupted without good cause.”

 

Those sharp eyes look him up and down, “Oh, but I have. Yet I’ve been rude, quite right. Let me introduce myself: I am Aldi – the youngest of Odin’s council members.”

 

Indeed, not the physique of a warrior, but one much more slippery, as his fox-like face also lends itself. “Make good on your word and I’ll be the judge of whether or not it is worth my attention.”

 

“You see, Odin Allfather is eager to clean up with Jotunheim’s affairs at present, but negotiations are stingy.”

 

“And why does he care about diplomacy now when he had what he wanted by force?”

 

“The other realms have voiced their disapproval of how the whole thing played out, seeing Jotunheim as a cautionary tale. They’ve started to reinforce their own battlements instead and now Odin wants to play the part of benevolent dictator, willing to treat those – uh…kindly – should they swear fealty to the crown, but the Jotuns are having none of it, to say the least.”

 

Loki swallows. “Who represents them now?”

 

“Thrym, a retired general to the North.”

 

Yes, he had been of the traditional guard, pride speaking before most, but at least not entirely unintelligent. “And how are those talks progressing.”

 

“That’s just the thing, they aren’t. The council sways heavily towards clauses that are remorseless and the generals as well. Jotunheim would be able to eke out a living for the next century, but little else.”

 

Loki closes his eyes, “What example can you give me?”

 

“Five million bushels of grain a year, and only after Asgard’s own stores are secured.”

 

Loki doesn’t even have to do the math, it’s so paltry as to be preposterous.

 

When he opens his eyes, Aldi’s face has gotten very close. “Personally I’m a bit more…flexible in how I might lean on either side of the table.”

 

“Then what are you asking?”

 

But Loki doesn’t even have to hear the answer, the size of those pupils told him everything. Aldi simply returns his question with another “The Odinson lets you alone during the day now does he not?”

 

Loki glowers.

 

“They’d never suspect you to be so frigid with how the rumors describe it. Day and night he has his way with you, while you indulge him in all that he fancies.”

 

When he moves back, Loki recognizes that smile as the same kind he used to so often use as well, when he had been in position to.

 

“The prince is quite taken. Our royal accountants even ran the numbers with Odin to make sure it wasn’t an error, or three. No one spends that much on a normal whore.”

 

Then the whispered words play themselves over when he’s alone again.

 

_Think on it._

 

\---

 

Throughout the rest of the day, the idea dangles on the periphery of his mind like a toy to a cat – one that he was not terribly attracted by to even paw. Loki was not unfamiliar with dealings in bedroom politics, so often as they occurred on other realms, but while he occupied possibly the most political bedroom now there was still the matter of an all-seeing gatekeeper here that he could not disguise his actions from.

 

The other being that those involved could rarely ever be trusted not to talk, and if Thor ever found out or even caught a whiff of another man on him, then Loki’s life would certainly be forfeit.

 

Thor.

 

He who was appraising him up and down right now in the back rooms of a slave trader’s shop. A unique ware for a priority patron.

 

He’s in a more playful mood tonight.

 

“What are your talents Jotun?”

 

“I used to slaughter armies, but now I suck Asgardian cock.” too much bite in the truth.

 

But the truth makes Thor grin. “I’ll not pay without being persuaded.” eyebrow cocked and cock at the ready.

 

“Your keeper tells me he intends on selling you for at least ten times your worth. So tell me, how much is that?”

 

Loki’s heart rate speeds up and his voice comes out a flutter “For one with their purity intact – as much as you own.”

 

Thor growls, “Spread yourself and prove it.”

 

Delicate gold chains dripped from Loki’s body wherever they could hang and when Thor shoves him back on the bed, they chime with the sound of a hundred tiny bells.

 

And it’s true of course. Those folds are already drenched from the way Thor prepared him earlier. His fingers had rubbed until his cunt had swelled and the evidence of his torment dripped out of him as beads on a string, smaller ones coalescing together, falling away at last when they become too heavy for the thread.

 

Thor caught them on his tongue like nectar.

 

Now, he hitches Loki up until he’s on all fours and his cock nestles between those outer lips, sliding against them but not into. He rocks like this gently, making sure not to lose control of the heated shaft.

 

“Those Asgardians, how did you protect this from them?”

 

Loki’s face is buried in his arms on the cushions in shame “I offered my ass instead.”

 

Thor’s member is now fully coated from Loki’s juices, so he angles his cock upwards towards the tighter hole and the natural lubrication does the rest.

 

He doesn’t ask his pet if he’s ready, merely knows from patience and experience that he is. Unlike the previous night when he took him, Thor has better motor control to aim as deep as he can, towards that bundle of nerves. He manages through clenched teeth, “I’ll pay your keeper twenty times.”

 

One arm is wrapped around Loki’s torso and the other one keeps them both upright. The Thunderer’s hips roll Loki forward on each thrust, and those gold chains refract the light at every angle with his bounces.

 

Thor’s movements go from a roll to a rock, to a wave, to a slam.

 

It ripples through him again, and again, and again.

 

And again.

 

But within that hollow echo somewhere, deep inside him, his blood roiled hot and the madness in his core laughs unhinged: he’s aroused by this, and it feels like he’s losing his mind.

 

His new master empties himself into him, pouring white into white until his insides are scorched.

 

He’s been held captive for two weeks, with no plans, no prospects, and no allies. The gilded walls and vaulted ceilings of this palace which seemed so infinite in their capacity were as tight as a vice.

 

As Loki comes in violent spasms, those walls close in on him further. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you imagine that conversation by the accountant to Odin?
> 
>  
> 
> A: Uhhh, your highness, I have here in the books: fifty golden chain clamps for $9999.99.
> 
> O: ………


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some chapters have plot. This is not quite one of them.

They fall into a – if one is generously inclined – routine.

 

Things calm down from continual lechery to mere idle lust. His meaningless days blur into carnal nights where sex slurred into sleep. Even the smattering of bruises started to blend together where they decorated his wrists, his hips, and the insides of his thighs. Thor takes him in all the ways that he can in every situation he can – except for the last one left.

 

Each night he rests in Thor’s arms as peacefully as a kidnapped lamb might sleep in a wolf’s den. The beast lingers over him with drool running down its jaws, and yet he had spared him this long already. All the while its protection just another way to savour.

 

Loki doesn’t think Thor’s restraint will last much longer.

 

But knowing, yet not quite knowing, while not torture, ate at him every day like water dripping on stone, and in Loki’s dreams, or perhaps they were nightmares, Aldi mounts him from behind like the latest Asgardian dog to claim his bitch. He whispers state information into Loki’s ears: trades findings for fellatio, secrets for sodomy.

 

Yes, Loki thinks he’s going mad. Even madder yet: that he’s starting to welcome it.

 

\---

 

The next several days keep Thor occupied enough that Thor is exhausted once he can return to his chambers. Loki has not been touched in two nights already and he can scarcely believe his luck.

 

The palace air had taken on a different tone once redecorations were in order for a state visit. The closer an area was to the spoke’s centre, the greater the change: one such being the dining hall.

 

Benches were swapped out for individual chairs, tankards traded places with goblets, and table cloths made way for fancier linens. It all became very refined for a not always refined native sort, and many of the temporary changes demanded greater delicacy when dining. It became rude to belch, ungentlemanly to whistle down a servant girl, and boorish to lay into one’s plates.

 

Loki personally welcomes the changes. It forces many an evening to end early.

 

For most Asgardians, miffed with having to put up with – to them – pansy etiquettes, find themselves unable to truly indulge in the style of feasting they prefer. Most make arrangements at home or leave early so they can get home and continue their porcine ways in privacy.

 

As such, Thor is now down to only one friend, a friend that perhaps has a greater appreciation for _civilities_.

 

She stands out as someone so desperately hoping to fit in, and yet will never truly due to their culture’s dichotomous views on gender. Loki regards them pensively. How unfortunate it must be to neuter yourself so. As a warrior, she but cast aside her feminine identity, but before Thor, she sought very much to salvage it, not realizing that identity is something more easily shed than refashioned.

 

In Thor’s eyes, she was not above or beneath any other, simultaneously the greatest comfort and the most brutal truth. Yet she savours these moments, hoping, hoping…

 

Loki is tired.

 

He hates having to stand stoically in waiting. She should either just invite Thor to her bed and spare Loki a night off, or sulk more at the marks on Loki’s neck until properly discouraged.

 

He decides to cough very delicately over one shoulder, and suddenly Sif is a shade self conscious at how she and Thor are the only two figures left. She bids her lord goodnight, and icily walks past Loki on the way out.

 

Thor, both unaccompanied but unfulfilled, sees to rectify the former and work on the other.

 

“Dine with me.”

 

Loki does so in what is to be a first, selecting the seat at the very end of the length-wise table, opposite to Thor himself who sat at the head. And because he spends his time here doing nothing but pour drinks, he does one for himself as well. The hour is late, the torch light is low, and Loki is not nearly tipsy enough to play host with Thor to a hall of no one but themselves. It’s all very strange. He wonders if he isn’t dreaming.

 

After filling the goblet Loki co-opted for himself, he takes a swig out of the carafe, grimacing at the burn. So. The Odinson wants to play domestic does he?

 

“I trust the talks with Vanaheim are proceeding?”

 

The previous week’s relations between Vanaheim and Asgard were the thinnest they’ve been since the alliance three centuries ago, which is why Odin is now courting them with all the attentions of a couple knowing the other might be about to split. “They are…strained.” Thor answers, while cradling his own cup.

 

Vanaheim had always been an important and comparatively powerful realm to keep good ties with, but in all their years allied, Vanaheim had never once called on Asgard, and likewise, Asgard never once called on Vanaheim. The two realms were separate in ideology and value – the Vanir prized seidr arts above all else, and the Asgardians worshipped those mightiest. The two regarded each other with wariness, and although Vanaheim had its soldiers just as Asgard had its mages, when all was said and done with the war in Jotunheim, hadn’t all the recognition and glory gone to the warriors anyway?

 

Now the Vanir were beginning to realize how little they needed Asgard, and the alliance’s renewal was in doubt.

 

It seemed that Thor was feeling morose about it, after all, Frigga was of Vanir blood too. Reading that perhaps Thor was feeling talkative, Loki tries plying.

 

“And what of Jotunheim?”

 

Thor’s eyes flick to his, sensing that he has let Loki an opening and attempting to shut it. “Those are on hold. There are more important matters at hand.”

 

More _important_ matters. Loki takes another swig.

 

Thor rises, sauntering over to stand behind where Loki was seated. His hands played with the long column of Loki’s neck until he held Loki’s face with them, tilting his profile upwards. “You needn’t worry about Jotunheim pet, what they receive in the end will be enough, as scraps of meat from the table to the dogs.”

 

Loki lets his hand grip the handle of cutlery at those cold words, made all the worse by the absolute apathy he saw in those blue eyes – apathy that by nature was more damning than hate could ever be. Thor continues, just to drive it home.

 

“I cannot say I’d miss them.”

 

Those large hands laced with such strength still held Loki’s neck between them. Loki keeps himself very still in instinctive terror as they stay there.

 

Thor holds it for a moment, feeling the pulse near his jugular with his thumbs.

 

Finally they move away.

 

Only to caress the exposed back of Loki’s flimsy midnight blue robes. His hand travels down his spine to the limits of its reveal before teasingly travelling up again.

 

“Except for you. Oh pet, how did Jotunheim ever produce one such as yourself?”

 

Thor was a man of great appetites, and there was no other word to describe that fierce want than feral. His hands part the draped fabric at his shoulders and it falls away in a hurry to his waist. Loki releases the knife and pushes the chair back to get up while rescuing the silk brocades.

 

“Master, we should return.”

 

Thor mocking gestures to the hall they’re in. “We’re alone already.”

 

He peels Loki’s hands away from his sides. His clothing falls to the ground in a sigh. Their surroundings are very much real, and anyone can walk in on them like this.

 

“Tonight I shall feast on the last of your innocence.”

 

There are dishes in the way at the centre and Thor pushes them to the side before hoisting Loki up on the table. Cups, plates, and cutlery, residing as they were on the edge, clatter to the floor scandalized.

 

Loki is frozen in resigned stillness. Beside his head laid any number of dishes for Thor’s hunger: braised slabs of venison decorated with glazed fruit, beef medallions glistening in their own juices dressed with all the vegetables of the season, roasted male fowls with their proud plumages plucked stuffed and resting in their tureens.

 

Yet Thor, ever the ultimate carnivore, yearned for something of a different variety. Loki is spread out for his enjoyment, and no matter all the outfits Thor loves to see him in, nude is always best. The torque glistens in the light, golden as the moment itself.

 

He lifts the goblet Loki had filled for himself and hovers his hand over his body, slowly splashing red wine along his length. Loki tries to keep his breathing under control as the liquid pools in places like the dip of his collar and the concave of his stomach.

 

Discarding the empty container, Thor moves onto the table where Loki is now completely enclosed underneath him. Thor’s eyes are blown so wide that the blue had almost been swallowed whole. And then, he brings his head down to suck at all the areas spilled upon, starting at the clavicle.

 

If a lion were a juvenile, then Thor lapped in kittenish licks. Loki feels the rasp of it against his skin and when it does so in strips he can feel the heat of its friction. Thor licks him clean, moving down to the valley of his stomach – a cartographer in tongue. He drinks from him like a famished traveller – sloppily but eager.

 

Finally, when Loki’s reserves are drained, he delves down between those legs where wine has stained and slid into the crevice. Thor flicks his tongue to taste as his only warning and then starts devouring him whole working in a riot of plunges and suction.

 

Loki has to seize handfuls of the table linens between his fingers to prevent himself from tangling it in Thor’s hair and pushing his head deeper instead. His back arches off the table as if the soul was leaving his body.

 

He wants to forget who he is, forget who they are.

 

To give in.

 

But just when he’s about to Thor pulls away and Loki whimpers at the absence. He’s a shivering mess of need and tension, hard and desperate. This is the creature Thor has turned him into.

 

When Thor’s contact comes back, the size and rigidity of it is unmistakeable and Loki spreads his legs wider to accept it. Surely he could by now. His cunt was wet and pulsing, so hungry for something to fill and Loki hasn’t felt this empty since before the last time he was stuffed with fingers and Mjolnir’s handle.

 

A far flung part of him was still mortified and angry, yelling at him to get a hold of himself over the turbulence of his urgencies threatening to drown it out, but the recurring voice in his head that mocked him every so often in situations like these just giggled. _Will you? Won’t you?_

 

It shuts up in a hurry however, as Thor slips the head of his godhood into the entrance. Thor keeps a hand on its base to better smear the walls of his vulva with precome and slick. The strings of it sliding down the crack of his ass tells Loki exactly how wet he is, and the pain on his tongue stings with how he’s bitten it down – no, he will not _beg_. Harem girls and brothel strumpets begged. He still had his title of Jotunheim prince.

 

And then he was pushing in, taking his time until the head was snug inside. Thor suppresses a shudder and fights as ferociously as he did on Jotunheim to keep in check that primal urge to thrust. It was simply sublime.

 

He pushes in a little further, only enough to meet the resistance there of the thin membrane in his way. In another moment Loki would be his, but he wants one more thing:

 

“Say my name.”

 

The syllable leaves his lips in a husky whisper, “ _Thor_.”

 

Loki is nearly bent in half as Thor folds those legs over his shoulders, taking possession of that mouth. His hips spear forward and Thor swallows the cry.  

 

Loki takes him in pulsating around his cock. Thor can hear his heart beat in his chest a panicked throb. He forces air into Loki’s lungs, deepening the kiss. Breathes in and out for the both of them until it becomes a safer frequency.  

 

When Loki’s body draws breath on his own, Thor withdraws to focus on their pleasure below. However, first he does to give those swollen and ravaged lips relief by smoothing his thumb across them.

 

Thor has not gone in all the way yet, merely pushed past that which was most painful, but now that it was over, he takes it slow, gently withdrawing and repumping in shallow thrusts, adjusting and easing accordingly. In time Loki’s body starts to respond again: the passage slicked as it ever was even beyond the effects of blood as a coagulate.

 

Soft and warm and _tight_.

 

No. No, those were words to describe any other.

 

Plush and consuming and _made for him_. How a frost giant could ever be these things Thor doesn’t know.

 

Finally, finally, Thor plants himself balls deep and groans at the perfection.

 

Thor remembers the first time he laid eyes on Loki, denying him beautiful but yet enticing. What a fool he was. Loki lies undone before him, and Thor no longer believes that his previous experiences with other women even counted as sex anymore.

 

He starts to rut, anything to release the burning inside centered beneath his belly.

 

The sounds of smacking bounce obscenely against the walls and back, sharp and plump. All the while Thor studies Loki’s face transfixed. He can tell pride is still holding his pet back, those moans easily capable of being louder, longer. His voice was lovely, and one day Thor will draw from that mouth more than he is given.

 

Loki takes him fully, but it’s mind-numbingly tight. Thor is hyperaware of the drag of his cock along those walls, clenching and unclenching though it made no difference in the give. At some point, Loki’s cock came without even being touched, but his quim has yet to, and Thor will not spill before it does.

 

They’re connected by a current that’s both molten and electrified. Thor hasn’t let his command slip like this in a long time in a place that wasn’t battle, but the voltage is light, skating across their skin with nipping sparks.

 

Thor uses them to take the rest of Loki apart.

 

Loki’s senses tumble off the cliff, blue body convulsing with a shout to heaven. Thor speeds up and the crude sounds of their union reverberate until it surrounds them just as Thor produces it in turn.

  

Thor’s release erupts in a bolt of ejaculate. It feels like it’d takes years off his life if he had been mortal. He spurts in waves, gushing and heaving. When he pulls out, his blood-tinged seed spills over to join the wine on the floor. Loki’s legs are quivering, hanging slack over the edge.

 

As Loki recovers his mind from its tattered shambles, he thinks dazedly about what’s happened. It was too sensual to be called a fucking, too pleasurable to have just been used, and wonders distantly if this is what so many couples, who are not them, call making-love.

 

He tries to weakly bring his legs up for support, but only one makes it.

 

And Thor, Thor is relieved as only a sinning man can be in deliverance: because Loki is a Jotun – lines Thor would never cross with any other race he can explore with Loki. In his adolescent youth, Thor was privileged to more pleasures of the flesh than most and it befitted his status, but maturity did not slake his thirsts, ones that no betrothed noble-woman or faraway princess would allow, and thus they all rush back, renewed.

 

He collects Loki in his arms and cleans him off with water and cloth, taking them both back to their chambers.

 

As Loki lies in bed, replaying the events in his head, it becomes clear to him that being pampered, being ravished, isn’t enough. Thor prizes him as his favourite plaything, his greatest conquest, but there’s a world of difference between those and being truly favored.

 

For the things he wants… being Loki, third prince of Jotunheim was no longer of any use. Thor had taken the last thing Loki had kept from him, and now, what’s to say Thor wouldn’t tire of him? Men only liked the struggle of being denied for so long, their masculinity required certain appeasements.

 

No, with the torque he was only Loki, wench of Thor Odinson, first in line to the throne of Asgard.

 

And why be anything if you can’t be the best?

 

He’ll likely never see Jotunheim again. Never be able to claim his birthright, will never be affected by the shame in his people’s eyes. But shame, or lack of it, didn’t fill bellies.

 

The next night, when they return to the same script, Loki flips Thor onto his back in the furs, taking a small satisfaction in the surprisingly pleased look on his expression. He touches himself with some degree of reservation as to be believable, and undulates his hips, released from the would-be pain of his by-gone purity. When he leans in to whisper, long hair a curtain for their faces, the shaded light doesn’t stop him from witnessing the thrill of acknowledgement.

 

_I think you’ve released something from my bestial nature, Thunderer._

 

As he works himself up and down that cock, Thor’s hands gone to rest at the back of his head, the wanton _‘yes’s’_ and _‘more’s’_ that leave his lips on those thrusts even sound convincing to himself. Since there was pleasure to be chased, he may as well chase it.

 

After he brings Thor off, he stays seated on the still-hard member, leaning over to lick his own spend off Thor’s chest. When he pleads for a second round, his master’s laughter fills the chamber.

 

If not for what it meant, Loki may have even liked the sound.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants to pick a favourite sex scene so far, I'd love to hear it.


	5. Chapter 5

If Thor had never sired bastards before, he thinks he is now very much in danger of doing so.

 

But then, Loki is Jotun, and Aesir and Jotun gametes are likely incompatible as it is. It’s a carte blanche, and so he empties himself into Loki every night until he is milked dry.

 

The rumors were true then about Jotun promiscuity.

 

They pull and grip and bite and suck, and the only place off limits is Thor’s neck (court appearances after all), though the opposite does not apply to Loki. Some nights Thor fucks Loki over so hard that in the corner of his mind he worries about breaking bone, and on those nights he swears they got there because Loki kept hissing ‘ _harder_.’ Some nights Loki takes him in so softly and sweetly, because he still wants it, but he has to be conscious of the swelling beneath. Some nights Thor isn’t satisfied until he uses each hole twice over. Some nights Loki takes his time dangling him over the edge with just one.

 

No two nights are ever the same. It’s a miracle Thor gets enough sleep at all.

 

But this night is to be the one that the palace has been preparing for weeks now. Thus their routine schedule shifts a session earlier in the afternoon as they bathe.

 

Except they are not in the baths of his quarters, but in a forest waterfall spring that he had once visited on Alfheim during a hunting trip.

 

Every part of the senses is fooled and Thor could forget he is on Asgard still entirely.

 

He had given Loki permission to maximize the aspects of his illusionary magic as they pertained to sex and sex only. Whereas previously, they had been mostly visual in their renderings, now they’d been completed to harness the other four.

 

Thor could feel the water’s chill against his heated shaft, could hear the roar of the falling torrent, and could smell the earthy textures of the rich forest soil.

 

As for the taste, well, that was the only one that didn’t need to be fooled, because Loki’s mouth was on his and Thor is occupied with plundering its depths.

 

His Jotun’s body melded into the aquamarine of the pool. The sheer, damp muslin clung to his skin where it was above water, while at the surface it floated and moved with the ripples. Loki looked like a nymph in mid-phase transition.

 

Earlier he had rubbed Thor down with oils and soaps, careful to cover every square inch of skin. By the time he had moved on to lathering Thor’s locks, arms winding around his head so that he didn’t need to shift his position, Thor was already solid and twitching. He watched those lips while Loki worked, fascinated by the slight bruising there before deciding to refresh it.

 

Along with the slight swelling, it had the added affect of darkening the skin’s shade there like navy lip paint and Thor finds that he quite likes it.

 

He follows those lips as they place kisses on his chest, his abdomen, and trail down his navel, greeting his prick. Thor never tires of seeing reddened skin in blue.

 

Loki sinks into the water and on his lap, dark hair floating around him like a siren. Thor’s breath hitches when he swipes his tongue across the thick under vein from root to tip. He leans back against the shallow edge of the pool, arms taut with tension as he keeps his grip on land.

 

His throbbing cock is as heavy on those lips as Loki’s gaze is, half-lidded and hungry. They part for him and then it sinks in until the base. Loki lets it rest there a moment, weighing it on his tongue. And then, he starts to lave and bob his head.

 

Thor appreciates Loki’s smart mouth, sometimes smarter than it ought to be, but he appreciates it best when it’s wrapped around him in worship. And Loki is so good at it now, like he was raised in a brothel instead of a castle.

 

Loki sucks greedily, every once in a while bringing it out with a pop to tease the slit of the crown. His hands work the shaft coated in saliva and precome. A squeeze here, a flutter there. To Thor it’s spell-work of a different kind and just as bewitching, but though he cannot deny those deft fingers, Thor is quickly reminded of how that tongue reigns supreme. Silver and gold, his pet has it all.

 

His entire body is heated by the fire Loki stokes at his loins. Thor just wishes the water had been colder to have made this more of a challenge.

 

Loki’s eyes lock onto Thor’s, head nuzzled against the juncture of his thigh, nose brushing along the thatch of dark blond hairs.

 

Thor shudders in sole warning.

 

His climax coats Loki’s lips where he gathers it into his mouth with his tongue, pearlescent and thick. When he finishes, the only evidence of their fantasy excursion is the light spray of water on Thor’s face to match the stray droplets of spend on Loki’s cheek.

 

Loki reminds him breathlessly, “We’ll be late.”

 

\---

 

They clean themselves in a hurry, servants hustling.

 

Thor is impeccably dressed as ever but gives himself the extra look over and hair toss.

 

\---

 

The ball had been Frigga’s idea.

 

That it may soften the impressions of Aesirs to a Vanir’s eyes – to show that they were just as capable of elegant pleasures when times were peaceful. Because times were surely peaceful, were they not?

 

It was not a bad idea necessarily, but to get a sense of exactly how often the palace threw them, one only needed to regard Thor’s less than enthused conduct. Loki smiles to himself, this should be most entertaining indeed, and lurks on the edges in waiting for Thor to trod on some maiden’s foot. Frigga, Vanir host to their five visiting delegates, took the hand of the eldest and longest serving member, and led him to the first dance of the night. Together they danced as if dancing was merely another aspect of daily life full of practice and grace, and following that, other dancers were shy to approach after the performance that was Asgard’s queen herself.

 

Ever dutiful, and not to be outdone as the residing royal he was, Thor flashed the girl beside him a winsome smile and brought her hand to his lips with a flourish of his red cape. Frigga laughs and defers her place to her son, and when they join the dance floor, Loki scoffs at how he’s not entirely lacking at it either.

 

The strains of music were soft on the evening ear, its quality lulling its listeners into a gentle revelry, and in gradual succession, the Aesirs’ apprehensions lessened. Once Thor took up with a girl, most others took their cue and hovered until their turn. Some of them sported necklines lower than necessary, and others chose tight corsets that pushed up their breasts to extents bordering on trollop. Thor did not discriminate as he swung them around by their wasp-waists. However, perhaps to their slight disappointment, he accepted another into his arms just as easily as he took the last one previous, none seeming to have truly made an impression, though neither could they deny his courteousness.

 

Thor stood out simply because of the red, but eventually, all the skirts and gowns revolving about mingled together in a crash of colors and Loki no longer cared to keep track.

 

However, one male figure stood out as having the time of his life. Each lady he danced with he twirled in his arms until she giggled, dizzy with delight and fell backwards into his arms. His movements were as much respectable as any of the best dancers, yet with it a carefreeness as to be exaggerated, but then the number ended, and it was with alarm that Loki realized the figure was coming towards _him_.

 

“I hope you didn’t think you could go unnoticed tonight?” He was as gaudily dressed as an Aesir, with robes gold and orange, and a ring on every finger.

 

Actually, Loki had a small modicum of hope he might. This was one of the more comparatively less showy items, though the clothing’s make was still luxurious. However, the color was not as attention-grabbing. He was decked in a green so dark as to almost be black, unless under direct light. It encased him in a high collar and bell sleeves that slit at the elbow, flowing down the rest of him like ink. A server carrying a tray passed by and offered them a drink which Loki took and the delegate did not. Loki smiles over the rim of his cup. “The Vanir have always been forbidden to us.” as most realms had been.

 

“A pity, I always thought.”

 

“And of whose thoughts may I be listening to?”

 

His amber eyes glint mischievously, “They call me the Ostentatious Olvrin, personally I think that title overlooks some of my other – ah – talents, but it is true that I prefer to see the opportunity for fun than otherwise. This night promises to be quite the night. Mine would be made if frost giants danced...?”

 

“Loki.” Eyes look to Thor in the crowd, still currently preoccupied. Remembering the last debacle when that was merely serving drinks, Loki decides it best not to, even if Thor has the added benefit of being clear-headed.

 

“It’d be a slight to every woman here if you are to do so with me before all of them in turn. However, dance with each first, and then I shall take your hand.” putting before the man an impossible task.

 

Olvrin claps his hands once in glee, not at all discouraged, recognizing a polite decline when it is given “Very well.”

 

He returns to the colorful throng of the crowd, and takes up another in his arms only too happy to oblige. By now, everyone was contented with their partners and they eased into the rhythm of music and bodies, formalities forgotten but courtesies retained. Thor bowed to a lady before taking her waist and guided her towards a circular pattern.

 

An anomaly by nature, Loki is not unfamiliar with feeling out of place, but nevertheless he is relieved when the banquet commences.

 

Everyone all but floats into the adjacent dining hall, dances granting them a lightness of foot and effervescence that had not yet fizzled out. Aesir men remembered to seat the ladies first, and no egregious errors were made in the transition. Frigga looks on approvingly and nods to Odin.

 

This time it’s the Vanir dignitaries on Odin’s right, and their respects given to be seated first. Thor and his friends do so last, and apart from the aesthetics, not much is demanded from those in attendance. Conversation never becomes rowdy, drinks flow freely but controlled, and the food – even with the menu repurposed for Vanir tastes - was exquisite.

 

Loki does as Loki is paraded around to do.

 

If the cup had been for wine, things may have played out very differently, but as it was otherwise, the color and transparency lent itself to scrutiny.

 

Thor signals for mead with an unused goblet to pair with the second course. It pours heavy and rich from the pitcher, liquid gold imbibed.

 

Loki’s eyes are better than most. They had to be when Jotunheim ranged from being as dark as the ironwoods of Angrboda’s abode, to the blinding white of a blizzard in summer and its snowed in surroundings. He makes out the barest amount of dust sitting at the bottom – no that couldn’t be it – these cups had been cleaned, and dust would not have the density to reside at the bottom of the container. What kind of precipitate…

 

Thor brought the cup to his lips and Loki’s thoughts cut out.

 

By the time he realizes what he’s done, Thor’s shocked expression accompanies the echo of Loki’s sharp slap, and all heads turn towards them.

 

Disbelief stretches the moment out, and then Thor’s huge figure focuses its anger, rising and turning on him.

 

“You…”

 

But the strike never comes though Loki braces for it.

 

Volstagg’s lumbering weight had stumbled back from his seat beside Thor and the man let out a bark. The area where the mead spilled was now burning a hole into the fabric of the table linen and eating its way through the wooden table beneath, corroding onto the stone floor.

 

And then.

 

Chaos.

 

\---

 

His footsteps lead him away from the cacophonous hall, like a feline that turns away from commotion to find its own harbor.

 

Loki had been excused from the bedlam that the banquet devolved into. He crosses back into their shared threshold having thwarted being framed for Thor’s murder, but he had not been certain at the time, had only acted on gut imperative.

 

Shutting the heavy chamber doors, he sinks down against them to gather himself. His mind is racing with the futility of it all. Between the panic and disorder of the banquet hall and the unresponsive darkness of Thor’s rooms, the latter was preferable, but no more enlightening.  

 

He’s not adverse to a little bit of mayhem here and now, but usually he was the one to incite it in the first place. Now he’s on the tailwind of it, and while his enemies are great, he has no idea what threats one can perceive in him. Of course, he could just be collateral, but who could be persuaded to take out Thor Odinson?

 

If Thor had brothers then it would be a different matter, but the crown has always been so undisputedly his when the time comes. Was it to spite Odin? To sever his line in his old age and force any direct heir to be a puppet king, too young to rule? Who wielded how much power and when? Who succeeded when there was no spare?

 

How had it been planted in a way Heimdall didn’t detect? A cloaking spell?

 

Questions of which the answers he was not privy to flashed in his thoughts, but he soon tires of their insistence. For beyond them was an image he could not banish, and it was of Thor in all his coldest fury. Those blue eyes might even make a Jotun proud from the icy trickle of dread that had travelled down his spine.

 

That’s how Loki knows he’s been cowed in captivity. Although it was not the first time he had seen such an expression, or even the first time it had been directed at him, it was the first time he had responded in rightful fear.

 

Loki knows he’s no longer who he used to be, had accepted it and embraced it for what he had deemed necessary to make the best of his situation. Was it cowardice? He does not hold it against himself, but how much of his pride can he maintain now that everyone saw how the Jotun servant is brought low by his master’s rage?

 

And why can he not shed the last of it to dispense the residual shame of seeing it slip from him?

 

He was contrarian by nature, but he usually wore it so well.

 

When Loki opens his eyes the room is still dark and dormant, and it comforts him like a shroud. Loneliness is no longer the chokehold it had been – convenient, since that was how it would be indefinitely.

 

Even with eyes open, Loki still recalls how Thor looked at him after the action and before it was made known why, and he had been afraid for his life – even though some days he wishes he’d be rid of it all the same.

 

Well.

 

So much for that.

 

The night was too sweet for murder, and Loki draws himself up to approach the balcony bannister. The marble stone railings were low and thick, and supported his figure when he swung his legs over to sit. He looks out at the smattering of stars and their planetary bodies, and tries to find one that may pinpoint home, but he’s never seen them from this side of Yggdrasil before, and he feels disoriented.

 

He folds his legs up to his chest and leans back against the colonnade, searching the endlessness of space that he has found himself lost in.

 

Tomorrow there will be consequences: interrogations, accusations, denials. But for now Loki undoes the elaborate top knot in his hair and cranes his neck back – inhaling deep that he still has it on him.

 

\---

 

Thor had only seen Loki fearful at him like that exactly once before, but back then it had not been for himself so much as it had been for the casket.

 

And in the recoil of the moment, it had seemed something else entirely. To have been humiliated before the court and their inter-realm guests by the one who was fed by him, clothed by him, spared by him. Loki owed Thor his life and more and yet he had spat on the hand extended in generosity.

 

That moment Thor had seen red. It was only Volstagg’s yelp that had brought him back to collect his senses.

 

What became soon evident was the very opposite of Thor’s initial realization. Only two breaths after did the collective eyes understand the scene before them, followed immediately by the rush of soldiers and guests alike gripping weaponry and taking on defensive stances.

 

Thor’s mind was still reeling from the resulting panic and anger of what had started out as any ordinary diplomatic event, but the previous hours’ fallout seemed much longer ago now that he was back in the sanctuary of his rooms.

 

It’s dark and there are no candles and the fireplace has not been lit. The temperature matches that of the ambient late summer night, and it’s there that Thor follows, curtains billowing their ghostly presence. Upon stepping out, Thor does not see anyone and his first thought jumps towards kidnapping, but as he turns on his heel, Loki is perched there, behind him and to the side – like a thief who climbed the vine.

 

He didn’t seem visibly shaken by what had just happened. These could be any one’s rooms and he could be star-gazing on any night, but when Thor spoke, he looked past him rather than at him.

 

Loki looked like an emissary of night itself, drawn from the same ebony cloth, starless and calm but for the red in his eyes. His hair had been undone and was not as wavy as it ought to have been if recently released, but gradually transitioned itself to natural straightness over his shoulder where it merged with the dark color of his robes. Thor finds that Loki prefers it down whereas Thor prefers it up only for the purpose of then being let down.

 

He finds himself staring and studying this enigmatic creature, as if anyone ever found a satisfactory answer in dark expanses beyond reach. He could if he so wanted to, reach out that is and make the image before him corporeal, but doing so would break the sudden otherworldly quality about him, even if Loki was quite literally, from another world to begin with.

 

Their silence maintains its tenuous existence, before Loki comprehends that Thor has been talking to him. “Don’t think on it too much Thunderer. You’re right: I merely wanted to slap you, that your cup was poisoned was an unfortunate coincidence.”

 

That tongue, always so ready with a riposte, and sometimes, even when Loki didn’t say anything at all, Thor interpreted it from his eyes. But tonight there’s no thrust in it, just a small jab. An attempt to buy time so as to recover their positions relative to each other, as if nothing has changed, as if Loki did not just save Thor’s life.

 

Now that Thor could think somewhat clearly again, he knew it was impossible even if Loki truly wanted to do either, due to the first operative that he was bound by: Thor, nor anyone else on Asgard could be harmed by Loki’s ministrations.

 

He takes his seat beside Loki, leaving a hand’s width of space between them. After all, he is not a man without honor, “Loki Laufeyson.”

 

That caught Loki’s attention, red eyes snapping towards his blue.

 

“Given your actions tonight, you may ask of me one favour that I will grant.”

 

Loki’s eyes widen, but then they narrow.

 

“Within reason.” Thor continuous.

 

An unimpressed eyebrow raises.

 

“Thus nothing political.”

 

The expression turns deadpan.

 

“And nothing to undo the restrictions on you.”

 

“My, what… generosity. Shall I request another servant girl costume or a golden bangle? Decisions, decisions…”

 

“If you’d rather not, I can rescind the offer.”

 

And Loki doesn’t want that either, even though the options are severely limited in what he can ask.

 

“I’ll think on it.” At least it was more substantial than an apology.

 

Thor doesn’t know why the expression of bored contemplation bothers him so. He was doing the right thing was he not? A boon from the first son of Asgard was no small deed – it’s what those who show integrity earn, a benevolence given per grace of character.

 

Somehow, perhaps foolishly, Thor had thought it may have made Loki happy.

 

Several quiet beats pass in which the stillness is so complete that neither can even make out the other’s breathing. What Loki is looking up for, Thor doesn’t ask.

 

Finally Thor awkwardly supplies, “Maybe some allowance of magic also, from time to time, outside of a sexual context can be allowed. Something benign.” This was really, all that he could do.

 

“Mmm, is this to be one of those moments Odinson?” Thor was like a guilty parent offering a child exactly one cookie from the jar at a time whenever feelings needed soothing over.

 

“Only if it is benign.”

 

 _Benign_. As if to him all seidr was meant to be was fairy lights in a glass bottle when it wasn’t inciting his longings or furthering his climax. Loki can hardly remember the last time when he didn’t use it to either deceive, maim, kill, or a combination of.

 

But it had been so long since he was collared and used magic for his own pleasures alone – as he felt so never more than now: a stranger in strange lands, just trying to live day to day in a nest full of hornets calling themselves heroes. He lowers his head onto his huddled knees, trying to recall what it had felt like in his early youth when he had discovered his abilities for the first time, applying them innocently and creatively. When he had been wholly and happily his own entity.

 

With a small smile, he recalls shaping ice against how ice would grow itself. The first time he did it without control he had made Helblindi an unintentional sea urchin, and his unsuspecting big brother drew his hand back in a clutch. He should do the same here, but then the Odinson might poke his eye out.

 

“Open your palm.” which Thor does so, half expecting a snake to coil up it, judging by his expression.

 

Loki takes his hand and brings it closer. They had touched each other so many times in so many configurations already and holding a hand should be nothing in comparison, but it is Thor’s hand in his – large, rough, sturdy – that contrasts so strangely with his own – sleek, smooth, delicate.

 

“Now I shall read your palm and tell you which lady you danced with tonight will beget you your heirs.”

 

Thor snorts.

 

“Stay still now.”

 

Loki tucks a lock of hair behind his ear and blows lightly.

 

It’s nothing complicated, but he concentrates and relishes the feeling. He builds from the core of the moisture leaving on his breath, shaping the molecules to construct rounded instead of spiked. Petals crystallized in Thor’s palm as it unfolded into a blossom so perfectly arranged as to be a true one frosted over, finishing the bloom when Loki loses air. Thor keeps his hand still, not allowing the gentle cold of it to bother his hold.

 

It lives its short life as a floral diamond before the heat makes it imperfect. They only enjoy the sight for a few minutes before it melts.

 

Loki whispers ruefully, “On Jotunheim I’d have been able to keep that for years.”

 

\---

 

They retreat to bed hesitantly afterwards. Neither closes the balcony doors, preferring instead to allow the cool night’s breeze flutter in, illuminating their figures in the pale half-light.

 

Thor’s gaze lingers on the smooth scar on Loki’s hand long after Loki feigns sleep.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

“Allfather, do not presume that we had any knowledge in the matter. To do so would be a grave insult.” Elva spoke coolly, eyes slate grey and impossible to decipher.

 

Odin’s councilman slammed the table. “The very insolence of it! As if anything like this has ever happened before when you weren’t here. My lord, the Vanir are capable of dark magics. We should detain them at once.”

 

Olvrin responds with his hands together, tips at his chin swivelling in his chair “But then our presence would be the perfect timing to cast blame if it came from those of your inner circle, wouldn’t it?” He stops to pluck the lint off his sleeve. “From my experience, those guilty do try their hardest to deflect.”

 

“How dare –” Odin cuts him off with a wave of his hand in midair.

 

“We recognize the necessity to ask for the sake of methodical investigation, but any more questioning beyond our full denials and we will have to regard it as being held suspect.”

 

Odin glares at Fenwen to shut up before absolutely nothing is salvageable.

 

“Our realm’s great friendship will pay the price. For how can we trust Asgard if that trust is not returned?”

 

Overturning tables and questioning the servants had produced no answers. The crux of the matter was simply that they had no evidence, and the peace treaty held heavy over Odin’s head. Thor was watching this meeting from the mezzanine above, a glower for the entire time they’ve gone back and forth.

 

The Vanir were becoming impatient by the tone of it, for they had argued in circles and gotten nowhere except red faces and ruffled composures.

 

Elva makes the decision for them. “Allfather. Let us pause the matter we came here for indefinitely. Perhaps in time, details will be uncovered. We are assured in our innocence, but to see it from your point of view is to be torn down the middle without either side giving way. Until circumstances become clearer, we will respect the current treaty as it stands. It has not expired yet.”

 

Those were the only sensible words spoken all morning, and with it Odin dismisses them.

 

\---

 

“Thor!” Frigga called after her son who was storming down the hall. Her brisk footsteps catch up with his upset stride and manages to wrap her arm around his so that he must slow down.

 

“Please, understand. Your father could not have done what Fenwen was asking him to do. The impacts of this alliance will go beyond his own rule – it will directly transition into yours as well.”

 

Thor takes a deep breath and stops, giving his mother an opportunity to regard him proper. His balled fists loosen, and he tries to calm himself. “I know, but that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.”

 

She brings her hands up to cup his face, “But have a care love, your emotions were plain to see. Just as your father will not make his decision without considering you, neither will the Vanir.”

 

He leans into her touch, expression becoming pained. She must have been just as shaken, but between the two of them she is much more able to keep her poise. For her he tries a forced smile, “Weave a scene for me then, that you may see my future safe and sound while doing so?”

 

Frigga hugs him tightly against her breast. “Oh darling, I have already seen it.”

 

\---

 

Wandering the halls was an option, and exactly as appealing as it sounded.

 

He was hungry, but the kitchens would likely be in upheaval. Cooks, servers, waiters, washers subject to search and study. Loki doubts very much that they’ll find any answers there. It had not been in the food, but in the silverware, leading him to think later stage tampering after the tables had already been set. They had already been so before the ball even began – leaving much too large a time span between to narrow down anyone in particular in what was already an easily accessible and communal area of the palace.

 

Whoever the perpetrator was, the circumstances of the event and all those involved in attendance and preparation was concealing enough. This kind of deed was much too covert and impersonal, its target too important, to disregard the details. It was by chance, pure chance, that he had discovered it.

 

Any pair of hands can point in any two directions, and everyone will spin their heads looking this way and that to note the snake slithering away. Whoever it was, they would disappear into the shadows and they would be none the wiser, though it’ll probably fall on Loki to taste test all the Odinson ate from now on.

 

No, but there’s only so long one can take of their own company before climbing the walls, not that the beaded slippers or taffeta skirts were conducive to that either. Damn Thor, all that gold and he couldn’t have had regular pants at any point. He could take it all off and do so naked, but then he’ll have some explaining to do if Thor comes back. The palace’s normal accordance was no longer the day’s order, and so Loki has no idea when that will be.

 

Instead Loki languishes in an opulent chair of elderwood – carved on it the image of every kind of bird that can be described, caught as he is, in this golden cage. To an outsider, he was the very picture of luxurious boredom, which while envious to some, was cloying for him.

 

Trust an attempted poisoning to happen to the golden prince of Asgard, and the fallout of it for Loki to be boredom of all things. But to anyone who knew Loki, and to know that he was not at the centre of this maelstrom, that was the greatest danger of all.

 

\---

 

Thor returns in the evening, in ill humor, for the rat had not yet been caught, and the kitchens did not host any.

 

Although his own rooms seem a bit of a disarray. Loki was rifling through the drawers in deep concentration. “Looking for something?”

 

_Books. Don’t you have any._

 

“An ivory hairpin of mine, Master. It seems to have gone missing. I hope a servant girl didn’t take a liking to it and tuck it away without my knowing.”

 

It was one that he liked, since it was the only one just long and sturdy enough to keep his hair in a simple bun with a few twists and a fasten by itself, but that wasn’t really what he wanted, and it was becoming clear that he wouldn’t find it either.

 

Strange that the personal rooms of Thor, the thunder god himself, revealed so little about the man. For most, the rooms and how they were kept were more or less a reflection of the user, yet Loki is finding little to go off on than from what he knows only in sexual exploits and battle conquest. To Asgardians, mayhap that’s all that matters, but if that was all there was then Loki couldn’t help but think that thus far, the future of Asgard was not to be as spectacular as it was told.

 

“But never mind that, I only wanted to make myself more presentable to you upon your return.” slipping into the role of coy pleasure slave, but one proper look at Thor and Loki detects he’s not quite in a ravishing mood.

 

Then, dropping pretense and voice quiet but serious, “Did they find any clue as to the culprit?”

 

Thor shakes his head and strolls past him to flop on the bed, sullen. He motions to the simple tray he brought with him, not hasty enough to dine in the normal banquet hall tonight. The kitchen staff server had made a point of taking a little bite of everything as he made a selection until Thor was urged out the door by their anxiety.

 

They always default to the bed instead of any table. It just happened to be the largest surface, and, at this point, a force of habit. He extends the invitation, “Care to join me? It’d be a poor show if such an amount can’t be finished between the two of us.”

 

Loki reaches for a bowl of berries as Thor tears off the end of a roll.

 

In his childhood, Thor always imagined frost giants eating raw, bloodied meat to match the red of their eyes, fangs sinking into a jugular, but Loki eats like anyone else he might know, better even, and chases the juice of a fruit when it runs down his fingers.

 

The simple act of watching Loki eat forces him to reassess his footing.

 

Near death and its escape will do that to you. He had not the time to feel afraid, but his anger in the thought of dying in such a manner brought forth a dread that was more insidious and long lived. Yet it seemed to him that keeping Loki near would bode well for him, because whether or not Loki liked it, his future was tied to Thor’s. If anything should happen to him, Thor knew that by another’s hand, Loki had no assurances that he’d be as well kept, bodily or mentally. There were those crueler, and Thor knew their ravenous leers.

 

Loki is clothed, but the way Odinson stares at him makes him feel exposed. It wasn’t perversion, but probing. Loki much more preferred it when Thor was simply indebted to him, instead of this…awkwardness.

 

Loki waits a little, before adjusting to sit cross legged beside him. “Come now. I almost poisoned Byleistr once with the spines of a needled stickleback.”

 

“And did you own up to it?”

 

“Of course not. I let them believe contamination. Byleistr swore off fish ever since after the vomiting spells.” Loki thinks back to Byleistr and how he always tormented him because apart from Loki himself, he was the next smallest and gullible. Loki may have been the youngest, but Byleistr was the real baby of the family, a giant boulder sized baby.

 

Thor, from where he was, looked up at Loki’s contemplative face, thinking that having three brothers vying for the throne must have been harsh and did not leave much in the sense of brotherly affection. Maybe Thor should be grateful he didn’t have any siblings after all. “Why did you do it?”

 

A scowl crossed his face, “Because he called me cute. It was enough that the rest of father’s court would never take me seriously, I didn’t need it from him too.”

 

Then that scowl morphs into something more bitterly tender, “Though we were very young at the time. I did not fully understand the consequences of what my actions were, and this was before my abilities manifested, before I was less resentful of what my role was to be.”

 

Inside, he pushes down the thought, _‘What exactly am I meant to be?’_

 

Jealousy is a poison in of itself, Thor supposes, and his existence alone is enough to threaten some, even though he has not insulted anyone personally. “I’ve had close encounters in training, but not since gaining Mjolnir.” These days Thor was practically untouchable, though he feels a little rusty. It unsettles him that if the criminal is of Asgard, then even these underhanded tactics have wormed their way into the thoughts of men who walk these halls, perhaps thinking it is the only method with a possibility of working.

 

“My point is that you lived, and that you’ll likely go on living, much to the transgressor’s chagrin. Would it have even been so bad? There was a roast with what looked like an Idunn’s apple in its mouth in reach.”

 

Suddenly, Loki cannot help but think of his brothers. Blindi and Bly (not that he’d ever say their nicknames aloud to another soul that wasn’t them). What were their last moments? Their final thoughts? Did they feel forsaken, or did they hold out for hope that Loki was merely being cruel in his timing?

 

Regret seizes him in a way that it had not yet done so since his imprisonment. The sclera of Loki’s eyes are red already, so hopefully the Odinson won’t notice any change so long as he keeps his face impassive. Keeps the mask on.

 

He closes his eyes and tries to hollow his heart.

 

Thor watches him, wondering why Loki has gone so quiet. Loki’s face looked almost as it did in sleep, and Thor is not yet used to that sight either. So often as it was in the darkened light of his chamber, when his Jotun’s skin color did not stand out so starkly azure, it could almost be considered recognizably human, and with it, an implied humanity.

 

But just because his pet has a prettier face than most of his race, Thor reminds himself that Loki is an exception, hardly representative of the rest of their brutish kind.

 

Then Thor becomes very curious, because it is a word that resides in the kernel of all men’s hearts across all worlds, defying definition yet so inspired imagining. “What do Jotuns consider love?” even though he does not think them capable of it in any way comparable to the rest of the higher realms.

 

Loki opens his eyes once more, caught by such an uncharacteristic question, but answers it with his brand of honesty – opposing and oxymoronic.

 

“Synonymous with pain.”

 

For love on Jotunheim was hard won, and if it did not then it perished. His own existence was parable. For hundreds of years Laufey and his brothers restrained themselves from forming any attachment to him, so unsure they were of whether he’d survive beyond adolescence. Thus, Loki’s childhood was an immutable cold and permafrost of another kind, winter’s heir apparent.

 

To Thor’s ears it sounded fitting, if savage. It showed in their general manner how harshly they coexisted, species bearable by only their own and even then it was for the sake of perpetuating their race. When Jotunheim had been isolated in the war before the last, it had been for the other realms’ protection.

 

“Why, what drivel do the Aesir use to describe it?”

 

Thor crosses his arms. “It is not drivel. And it is spoken in kind alongside the greatest of virtues such as honour and nobility.”

 

“Then it must affront you that you have not the trifecta, else wise, you would not be keeping me now would you.” Loki parries, quick as a whip.

 

Thor counters, yet enjoying the lash of it. “Only because such a match will not be so common a sight. To love is to be another’s equal in greatness.” and Thor assures himself that such a one exists, if still yet to be found.

 

“At this rate all you’ll find is one equal in conceit.” without a hint of irony in that voice. Loki was treading dangerously on insulting him, but Thor lets it go, choosing instead for distance from that forked tongue. He walks slowly towards the balcony, shucking his tunic along the way.

 

Asgard is quiet like this, cushioned and snug under the blanket of stars, but Thor is still wide awake.

 

When Loki sneaks up from behind, steps barely making a sound until he speaks into his ear, it comes out as a taunt both seductive and cruel. “Show me then, oh great Thunderer, how exactly you’d woo a damsel most fair, and how that’s different from dragging her to your lair.”

 

He grabs Loki’s hands, stopping them in their serpentine path upon his chest and drags the mocking thing to face him. Thor knows he’s being made fun of, but “If you beg for it, then what of my reward?”

 

He pretends modesty with a hand on his chest, “From me?” and looks around “Why, the moon herself.”

 

Loki is wretched in his sarcasm, but very few would ever to speak to him in this manner. Thor indulges in it for its daring. He’ll treat him this one night then, just to tease what’s beyond reach. In all their time together, this is now the first.

 

“Give us a scene of your desires.”

 

So Thor was feeling magnanimous. Two nights in a row. Loki doesn’t have very long to think before the torque extracts from him a decision. When it does, the moonlight casts them over into a realm of fairytale.

 

Ever versatile on given the first play, “I wasn’t sure you’d come tonight.”

 

Thor has danced this dance before, the simplest kind that all lads learn when spying through the bushes, having followed the sounds of rustling fabric.

 

But they are not in anything so humble as a hedge space. The garden is breathtaking. Leaves limned in emerald and silver, boughs heavy with the weight and richer for it. The balcony colonnades morph into a repeating marble archway telling of lovers flitting between them in a game of chase. Dainty flowers, delicate and white, powder the shadows of the filtered light. Somewhere, a fountain babbles its praises.

 

Loki stands at the center of it all.

 

Thor takes his hand and brings it to his lips. “I had to see you again.”

 

Loki’s hair is as straight and sleek as black oil. Thor desperately wants to see it mussed up on the sweet smelling grass, strand to strand. He tugs them down, down, down. Loki descends as if pulled underwater, the column of his neck the last to fall, sinning with a sigh.

 

Thor is very aware that the other is still fully dressed, and the thin material covering him is as thin as his patience and in the way where skin could be meeting skin. He was outfitted in a see through black top with lapis floral imprints along the arms and torso. For a lesser maiden, Thor would have tore it off with his teeth, with Loki he has to consider his pocket money. Working his way down the curve of Loki’s back, he frees each button one by one as Loki laughs and squirms beneath him to make the task more difficult. Thor pins him down with the hot brand of his lips of Loki’s shoulder when it’s revealed.

 

The skirt was already rucked up, affording him easy access. The pads of Thor’s fingers seek lightly his entryway, following the heat inward, then upward. Loki sucks in a breath, they always do. A wriggle of his hips and Loki forces those digits deeper. “Oh, your majesty.” he croons, the way a sloe-eyed nubile might, but with the low, rich timbre of Loki’s voice, those simple words lance through Thor’s bloodstream where it’s now filling his cock.

 

Thor had only his trousers to start with, and it’s too much as is. Not willing to stand and let go of what’s his, he instead unbuckles and lets it collect around his knees. Both legs quiver beside each of his thighs. He moans “Show me the other court girls were not exaggerating about your,” and rolls his hips “prowess.”

 

Evidently Loki is having a hoot imitating how he believes Thor’s previous tumbles behave. Other than their voices not being as lilting, their laugh not as musical, their mewls not as breathy, and their nails not so iron on his shoulder blade, it’s not too far off the mark. Thor pulls Loki forward by the waist until that ass is against his pelvis and that slit lined up with the base of his erection.

 

He looks at Loki, undone and beneath him, as fine as any. The elegant lines of his body regal but his position whorish, and it makes Thor’s head spin. Loki smiles and dips his head to the side, peering up from those lashes, lips curving like it had just been told the juiciest of gossip.

 

Oh, but he won’t give Loki release that easily. Leaning forward so that their faces are only an inch apart, the predator instinct in Thor tells him to take without consideration. The women who usually offered themselves to him were wanting and willing already, but still thought themselves in control up until this point. Thought they held his heart. That red throbbing organ, beating in time with his pulsing prick below. Loki keens in desperation when he cants his hips but Thor resists the draw.

 

If Loki were his intended and not his war spoil.

 

If Loki were not of the oldest enemy of his house.

 

If Loki did not know him as the proud slayer of his people.

 

If…

 

If.

 

Thor can utter honeyed falsities too. “I’ll make you queen some day.”

 

Looking into Loki’s eyes or at his lips was always prelude to an inevitable descent.

 

Kissing is hardly adequate to describe it.

 

Thor steals the very air from Loki with the deliberate torment of a boy plucking the wings off a butterfly, and Thor can hear the futile flutter of Loki’s heart in his chest like the trapped thing of beauty he was.

 

The next part of the game he knows as intimately as thunder and lightning. Here is when they would beg, whisper or scream, his name on their lips for his cock to their cunt.

 

“Tell me the truth of what you want.”

 

But Loki is Loki, unto himself, and Thor was foolish to think he’d merely repeat another’s pleas.

 

He’s been rendered breathless, and speaks as if from sleep, but those dazed eyes somehow navigate to his and his words, though soft, have clarity.

 

“To be your equal.”

 

Then Loki presses Thor’s buttocks forwards, and before Thor intends it, Loki’s sheathed himself onto him where it’s full and succulent. There’s something sentimental and profound in the Odinson’s eyes, and Loki doesn’t need to flip him on to his back for the other to see that he’s lost the upper hand.

 

Of which, his comes up to stroke the side of Thor’s face, and it’s not until the motion finishes that Thor remembers to move.

 

An innocent Loki is not, but no longer is he playing strumpet. Yet he is glorious, fiercely alive and quietly bound. The first and likely last of his kind to be. And his. Protectiveness washes over him alongside possessiveness. He takes him slowly.

 

They’re connected at both ends, Thor thrusting into him below and Loki’s mouth latched onto his above. One of Thor’s arms wraps around him at the waist, while Loki’s hooks around his neck. Loki’s body curves into Thor’s as Thor’s body drives into Loki’s. The only space that opens between them is when Thor must pull back to push in.

 

Push.

 

Exhale.

 

Pull.

 

Inhale.

 

Their rhythm is like breathing.

 

In this secret garden, to which only the two of them will ever know, the final throes of their passion feel like absolution. As he releases inside Loki, every nerve ignited, his vision goes white for but a moment. Loki’s orgasm follows swiftly, sweeping him aside in its wave, and by the end of the aftershock, there are deep crescents in the palm of his hand as well as the line of his teeth on his bottom lip.

 

They float down together towards reality, delicately as a dust mote descending on a hand mirror. Thor feels impossibly young again, having found completion for the first time behind his mother’s shrubbery.

 

Of all that they have done together, he finds himself at a loss for words now. Like this.

 

Thor rolls away on his back and heaves in oxygen. Loki too, beside him. They have swam ashore of their ecstasy and now must acclimate to solid ground. The verdant leaves above their shaded view disappear one by one until the moon is exposed again.

 

When Loki’s illusions dispelled, they usually did so like a wave smoothing the sand in one swell, but this one lingers like thawing frost on a warm, early winter morning. The garden’s afterimage still stays on the back of Thor’s eyelids for a few calming heartbeats more.

 

Thor clears his throat and speaks his first few in a mumble “If it’s a garden you’d like, then you may have access to them.”

 

Loki hums his approval, a subtle smile that, for him, could almost be called smug if there were another to see it.

 

Eventually, the moon climbs to its zenith, but Thor doesn’t fancy accidentally falling asleep here and tries to get up with a groan. Loki manages it much more neatly blinks once the wing-beat of his eyelash, doing up just the highest button at the back of his neck and smoothing his dress to pat at his lap. “You can have a consolation prize.” Thor lies down again as indicated, for the material did look voluminously crisp and comfortable.

 

Loki reaches up and plucks the moon from its place in the night sky, multiplies it, and juggles them for Thor’s amusement before returning it to its dark perch.

 

Illusions all, Thor knew, but no less wondrous.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loki gets a wardrobe upgrade somewhere down the line that’s more leather, metal, and death, but until then it’s Marchesa.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Looks at word count.* 
> 
> Does this mean if I do another of what I've been doing x4, that I'll have a 100k work on my hands? Eeeeeee.

Loki twirls the delicate blade between his thumb and forefinger, captivated by the seemingly insignificant. Gripping another handful, he tugs and lets the wind release the grass from his palm. Thin lines of green scatter into the undergrowth.

 

It’s beautiful. These gardens and all they entail.

 

While Jotunheim had forms of vegetation, they predominantly existed in ruddy reds or hardy browns. It certainly never sprang forth from the soil so lushly verdant as it did on Asgard in her readily sun soaked and productive grounds. Back then, the closest shades he recalled existed in the shallow seawater of an iceberg’s outline before it plunged into secrecy, the moment between oceans and drops as waves broke against the cliff side before coming to foam on the shore, the thin rind of light around a lunar corona on an overcast night promising a stormy tomorrow.

 

Now he can take it in hand, create a laurel, or arrange a bouquet – such quaint items he had only heard described without any reference as to the components, from older Jotun individuals who recalled what strange goods had crossed their lands once before.

 

Loki never much cared for the daylight when all of Asgard’s golden surfaces shone bright enough to blind and brag, but the sunlight here, freed as it was from gilded architecture to nourish the natural, temporarily distracted him from thinking about the distance from home, its map of stars put away.

 

It’s not freedom, but he’ll accept escapism too.

 

The morning dew had dried, and with it evaporated the coolness that hovered near the ground. What remained was a stark sense to the air like a nudist lying prone in a pastoral landscape, though he is not, but just barely. Loki turns over to lie on his front while the sun dries off the thin dampened weave of organza on his back.

 

There were many gardens to choose from, and within some of them multiple sections that were inspired from all the styles that existed on the world tree’s branches. Some were regularly clipped and kept, while others were more permissible in their natural abandon. Loki sought for himself a small area of deliberate dilapidation: its fountain gone dry, sprouts struggling up from the pavestone path’s cracks, transparent mists of pollen that were sent up with each step from the interrupted grass.

 

His eyes linger on the limitless shades in his secluded little enclosure. His mind works to catalogue all the different hues chlorophyll takes form in: the pale peridot of a leaf’s center fold, the celadon on a layer of trichomes of a fuzzy frond, the viridian sheen on the waxy stalk of an untamed ornamental. It’ll take some time yet before he sees it all, and after that, perhaps not much longer before the novelty wears off, but it hasn’t been so long that Loki can no longer recognize unburdened happiness for what it is.

 

The warm air lulls him to a perfumed sleep, and it’s with the knowledge that when he opens his eyes again that he will be greeted with the sight of it all in renewed wonder that he allows himself to do so.

 

\---

 

On a fine a day as any in Asgard (meaning that for everyone else there was never a real good reason to be absent) Thor returns to the training grounds, greeting old friends and carrying a large crate.

 

“Thor, lo! And here we were just discussing naming a new captain of the guard.” Fandral gestures to Hogun, otherwise too modest or grim to recommend himself. “Stoic. Level-headed. What say you?”

 

“A fine proposal. I’ll give it gladly on condition of my defeat. And since it’s been a while, you might be lucky if you’ve been training in my absence.”

 

Some would call it braggadocio, but to them, encouragement by challenge was simply Thor’s style.

 

“Hmm, yes, not exactly a secret of why that’s been.” Fandral elbows Volstagg in the ribs – who tried very hard to keep from laughing, but his great shaking figure gives it away.

 

Sif chastises them while attempting not the blush beside Thor, “You know better than to repeat gossip.”

 

“Yes, but when most of the trainees who look up to their prince decide to frequent bordellos instead, paying coin for those who look exotic, one more or less has to take it as gospel.”

 

Also the fact that he’s walked (invited) in on them. Fandral’s eye glints as it meets Thor’s.

 

Now it was Thor containing his blush. “Yes, well,” and deposits the box of new weaponry before them, “my being here now is a call back to arms. These are courtesy of Svartalfheim.”

 

Sif picks up a short sword from the collection, letting the light gleam off the length of it as she turns it in her hand. “Of a fine make to be sure.” It’s polished and sturdy, simple but deadly efficient.

 

Thor steps aside and crosses his arms. “Hogun, choose one and let’s see how it measures up.”

 

Hogun searches through the options and picks for himself a halberd, after considering the disadvantages of Thor’s hammer. He weighs it in his hand briefly and nods his approval.

 

These days it’s more challenging when Thor spars. He does so with Mjolnir still, but as a regular hammer instead of the powers of thunder, lightning, and flight she bestows him. Otherwise, there’d be nothing to gain from his experiences on Asgard with their current roster of fighters as is. Rather, Thor tries to set an attainable standard, one within perceptible reach, to keep their fighters inspired.

 

Mjolnir hums against his palm, joyous for some overdue activity. It’s not bloodshed she longs for so much as the opportunity to become an extension of her master once more.

 

Thor and Hogun take up their positions at a distance against each other. Sif brings down her sword, Nayslayer, to slice the air between them, commencing the fight.

 

Thor moves first by spinning Mjolnir and charging – a move that was both defense and offense. Hogun dives and rolls to the side as his only option.

 

Fighting his friends meant doing so according to each of their styles. Fandral was quippy and used fancy footwork, Volstagg was a cannonball when exact with his targeting, and Sif was graceful while combining poise and strength, however Hogun was the most focused of the four. Hogun never talked if his actions could speak for him and facing off against him meant a spar unfettered from conversation or mind games. Combat alone was camaraderie, and Thor rejoices in it.

 

Despite the morning star being his primary weapon, Hogun did not opt for what was immediately similar. Discounting Mjolnir’s abilities, Thor’s hammer and Hogun’s club occupied a similar class. However, with the halberd, Hogun uses the contrast to his advantage.

 

Thor gives up defense for mobility, but Mjolnir’s short reach meant he lost time raising her in an arc to generate enough force in any victory concluding blow. All the while Hogun deftly sidesteps and evades, always just out of reach. Due to the halberd’s length, he also loses out of the drawback time it requires to impale, but instead uses the handle to sweep and leverage.

 

Thor is knocked back a few steps when Hogun uses the part right below the blade head as a fulcrum and angles up sharply to hit Thor with the butt of the halberd.

 

But it takes a mountain to keep Thor down and he regains his footing with a congratulatory smirk at his opponent. Hogun is smiling as well.

 

Thor may as well also have been god of war for how naturally battle comes to him, but that title already belonged to Tyr, and it probably wouldn’t do any favours to scuff the older god’s nose. Thor doesn’t even need to think to internalize when the halberd’s end seeks him out again. He spins to the side to dodge, but instead of keeping his arm in, grabs onto the wood and forces it forward with his body’s momentum. Hogun is thrown forward with the strength of it. What choice did he have when letting go meant losing possession with thin hopes of retrieval?

 

The precious few seconds when Hogun is off balance gives Thor the opening he needs to claim the match. Hogun only has enough time to bring the halberd up to block. Then, where hammer met wood…

 

It held.

 

 _Again_. Mjolnir implores, or whatever the mental communication equivalent of that was when translating uru metal.

 

Volstagg, Fandral, and Sif stand up from where they were watching. Hogun opens his eyes slowly, having shut them tight expecting splinters to fly everywhere. Thor frowns and retreats, disappointment and suspicion in his eyes.

 

Hogun sits up in the dirt and unwraps the leather grip on the lower third. Sure enough, protective dwarven runes were carved in to magically reinforce the weapon’s integrity.

 

“You said these were from Svartalfheim?” Fandral interjects.

 

“One of our informants disguised himself as a dark elf commissioner. Who knows how much and for how long they’ve been selling these already.”

 

“And to how many other clients.”

 

“We’ll put a greater emphasis on disarming the enemy in lessons and training from now on.” decides Sif.

 

“Do so.” Thor commands. “For now, leave those weapons with the armory.” then he departs glumly, never one to enjoy delivering the news of more political headaches to the Allfather.

 

\---

 

These days, Loki and his nightly company are the only absolutes. Nothing about the events following Jotunheim’s defeat had gone according to his father’s council’s predictions. Instead of being regarded as the realms’ consummate protector, every other realm was now arming themselves to the teeth, and, if small sample size might indicate, paying good money for it. The dwarves weren’t exactly the easiest lot, but they could always be bought, and that worked out well since Asgard was by far the wealthiest, but now other armies appear willing to expend in the event of –

 

No. That was ridiculous.

 

Asgard had always been a benefactor to those who pledged allegiance to the crown. That wasn’t about to change.

 

“Any particular request tonight?” Loki purrs, straddling his waist and tracing a finger along his defined abs (you could use the damn things as a washboard) – a motion that’s somehow both bored and appraising. It’s not that Thor was distracted by recent events – alright fine, maybe he was: Odin had made a summons with Nidavellir’s smiths for the morrow, and the dwarves were not ones to be trusted without contractual bindings to keep them to their word ahead of time.

 

“Are you good at spotting liars?” thinking Loki would, being of the cunning sort.

 

“Mmm. That depends on the liar.” he replies, before dipping his head down to lick a stripe from Thor’s stomach to the valley of his pectorals.

 

“Is that meant to be taken as a yes or no?” Thor tries very hard to stay on task. Loki is in a very good mood, which may bode poorly for him. He smells of loam and jasmonate, scents Thor is not unfamiliar with, but seem alien coming off a Jotun, associates them with fertility and spring.

 

The question causes Loki no discomfort whatsoever, whereas it weighed on him heavily, as it always had regarding all matters political, entangled interests, and the ensuing lifetime ahead of him to sort it all out.

 

Loki crosses his arms and props himself on Thor’s chest. “There are, broadly speaking, and with a myriad of variations, three categories of liars: those who believe their own lies, those who do not, and those who care not for the truth but merely speak for what conveniences them at the time. The first is the hardest sort to detect, the second the easiest, and the third somewhere in between.”

 

Thor grumbles, “What does it imply that you are so in tune with the art of lying?”

 

Loki pecks him on the lips. “That I’m a natural.”

 

Thor’s about to remark, except Loki’s finger on his mouth, shutting it, signifies that he’s not yet done making his point. “Don’t judge Odinson. I can even make a liar out of you.” those red eyes speak of a downfall Thor does not believe. Loki smirks, recognizing a self-fulfilling prophesy when he sees one.

 

There were few qualities worse to Thor than such, amongst them being a coward or an ergi, but…the Allfather was aging, and to become a king meant it will no longer be practical to speak his mind. If Loki does not make him one now, circumstances will force it so, and while stakes are higher.

 

“Play a game with me, and if you win, I’ll bring you to newly elevated heights.” because when you already knew the outcome, it doesn’t matter what you promise for an impossibility.

 

Thor’s pride has already conceded participation. Loki continues. “Start each statement with ‘Jotuns are…’ and for every fact I will pleasure you, whereas for every falsehood I will pleasure myself.” Loki draws himself back up, imposing and impressive.

 

“Very well, and you will abide by your own rules.” the torque now confirming the terms. Loki shrugs elegantly.

 

He didn’t imagine the night going this way. Loki almost never gives him a straight answer. In his position he was technically lower than a servant, and even servants answered when bid to.

 

It’s not exactly Thor’s idea of dirty talk, but he starts off with “Jotuns are vicious creatures who subsist on the transgression of weaker realms for resources not their own.”

 

Loki takes his own cock in hand and strokes.

 

Thor tries another “Jotuns carve heritage lines into the bodies of babes shortly after birth. The louder the infant cries throughout the ordeal, the greater the indication of strength.”

 

Loki’s skilled hand does not leave his own member and works another stroke.

 

The image of his thrall above him, taking his own pleasure before his, positions and roles inverted, disorients him further though the foundations of his bed and him lying in it only assures him physically.

 

Thor’s brow has now become quizzical. “Jotuns will partake in blood sports to weed out the weakest among them when they are deemed not worth keeping during food scarcity.”

 

Nothing changes except that Loki has worked himself to hardness, and that the sight of him has Thor achingly hard as well, but under the most untoward of situations.

 

Desperate, he attempts, “Jotuns are blue…?”

 

Loki smothers a snigger, and because he pities the golden prince’s prejudices, treats and torments him to the tighter of two holes, spearing himself down Thor’s shaft against his ass, which conformed in a way that was both pliant yet full of friction.

 

Thor hisses in gratification when Loki is seated fully, only to growl in annoyance when that heat drags upwards, taunting him without assurance of returning.

 

“Go on, say we have red eyes next, though you only have so many freebies.” Loki cautions in mock concern.

 

There is a way to win this easily. If Loki were in Thor’s position, he’d merely reverse the statements to start with a negative ‘Jotuns are/do not…’ and the probability of accuracy is much greater, but Thor is looking at this the wrong way, of course.

 

Loki pauses for Thor’s next blunder, dragging out the self-inflicted ridicule. He’s owed this much.

 

“Jotuns only answer to the eternal cold of the Casket of Ancient Winters and the one who wields it.”

 

So Thor believes them to be a race run under duress, lesser monsters in the rule of greater ones. Loki banishes that notion with another lazy stroke.

 

Sooner than he expected, their game settles into a leisurely pace as Thor exhausts his misinformed mind for any shred of the truth he held onto without simply describing anatomy.

 

It is beyond amusing to see Thor so flustered, but oh how he was just begging to be humbled, and Loki was itching to lay down all these misconceptions. He knew that Thor was only a product of his upbringing, but to his knowledge, Jotunheim didn’t have any analogous lies that were so ridiculous.

 

“Jotuns hold fighting tournaments for mating rites.”

 

That probably referred to that one historical incident once, but oh how a few centuries of isolation will spin the bigotry to such an extreme.

 

It should anger him more than anything, but the situation and context were so absurd that it bordered on parody. Yet his body has become so tactilely conditioned that even this does not stop it from responding accordingly.

 

Thor continues spouting nonsense at such an unbroken rate that Loki milks himself to completion.

 

And isn’t it delicious.

 

Everything he articulates is artful, and his voiced orgasms are the same. Loki is mellifluous whereas Thor would have been guttural.

 

When it’s over, he looks at his hand, the seed over his scar. Despite race, this is what it came down to when getting through to Thor. Theirs will be a language punctuated by blood and semen. Violence and pleasure alike.

 

Either or.

 

One and the same.

 

He tastes his own spend. It’s viscous and salty, and Thor swallows thickly in time with him, though for an entirely different emotion.

 

“It seems you were the first category of liar all this time.” Loki drew a perverse sort of satisfaction, relishing in Thor’s realization of his blind biases. “And had it not been for tonight, how much longer would you have gone on believing them?”

 

Thor doesn’t answer. Just as well since the question was rhetorical anyway. His expression is one of sexual frustration, normal frustration, and humility. But seeing as Thor was still hard, the sexual frustration is what’s immediate priority.

 

Their game was over. There was no reason for Thor to be further denied.

 

He fucks into Loki as any sore loser might: fast and forceful. It’s nothing Loki hasn’t taken before, but no matter his being on all fours meaning a submissive stance, Loki knows Thor’s own words tested against him will resonate for longer than any act of acquiesce.

 

When Thor comes inside, it feels like visceral vindication.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My condolences for this chapter being a little shorter, but only because the next chapter will end up being a little longer.


	8. Chapter 8

It turns out Loki really needn’t have come at all, because the dwarves didn’t deny it.

 

“What of an exclusion clause.” Odin asks, seated on his throne, attempting to project an image of power, and for all that it did so, Gungnir was as effective as a gilded walking stick.

 

Where Loki’s watching at a distance, even he can see the gleam of teeth from Brodnir’s greedy smile. Either they were gold capped, or really just that yellow.

 

“You could melt this palace down and it still wouldn’t be enough.” he replies. It’s difficult to interpret that as anything other than gloating. And for the dwarves, craftsmen above all who industriously sold their handiwork, yet relegated to a life of soot and sweat only ever in the services of others without nearly as much glory in their names than the warriors who wielded their work, well…who could blame them for lording it over the Aesir now.

 

Loki crossed his arms leaning in the column’s shadow where he was in the corner. It would have been more to Odin’s advantage if the dwarves tried to lie since it would’ve put them on the defensive, but the dwarves are not to be underestimated. As is, it’s Odin who must go begging.

 

He looks away. Nothing more to witness but Brodnir’s strut back to the Bifrost.

 

Looking away from the scene however, meant there was little else but to cast his eyes at those in attendance. Since the issue pertained to both seidr and weaponry, those who took an interest and to whom it was relevant featured very contrasting profiles. It was easy to differentiate the warriors from the mages, and between the two was nary a woman to be found, for Sif was not here.

 

Thor was not too far away from him, but he was closer to the crowd while some would swear the atmosphere around Loki had gone a little chilly.

 

Loki can sense eyes on him. Sometimes fleeting, sometimes prolonged. While everyone kept one ear trained on the exchange, there was something else curious in their midst. Apparently he is what’s considered the oddity, never mind the spindly hunchback side-eying him a dozen paces away. Three quarters of the room have biceps larger than his head.

 

The remaining – he takes good care to remember their faces – have yet to pay.

 

They’re significantly older than him, if Aesir and Jotnar life expectancies are comparable. None of them are necessarily dust bags, but even Loki knew from a century old that he was considered a very very young prodigy. Within the next decade he had been given an informal title of _‘the jewel of Jotunheim’_ by his tutors, and his father, for the first time then, looked at him with something akin to pride in his eyes.

 

Let them stare then. For once, Loki was pleased that Thor was his keeper. It made him untouchable. He smiles, assured in his cage, builds a nest, and sings.

 

When the hall is dismissed, he leaves head high and with a subtle flourish of his robes. Thor waits for him in the wing. He’s moody again, but what had he expected from the situation, of Asgard’s own making?

 

“That was an interesting excursion. Now I know what the demographics of Asgard’s ruling class look like.” Aldi had not been there. In fact, there were very few young, or even relatively young figures at all.

 

“I don’t suppose there’s a rabbit you can pull out of your hat as to what a potential solution to this may be?” Poor Thor, thinking Loki isn’t enjoying the drama of Asgard at large being jostled in their seats just a little. Or maybe he does and he thinks he can force it out of him with the right combination of words.

 

“None for now.” and it was the truth, whether Thor liked it or not.

 

Another figure in the trickle of people leaving takes a surreptitious glance at Loki, thinking he’d go unnoticed. Mage. Thor lingers on the scene, for once oblivious to this. It goes: warrior, warrior, mage, warrior, warrior, warrior, warrior mage. Exactly a 3:1 ratio.

 

Due to his stature, they’re not alerted to Brodnir’s presence until he’s right beside them. His hands are clasped behind his back, as if the summons to Asgard had been a very pleasant stroll. “I did wonder how that torque would be put to use. Can’t say I’m surprised.”

 

No preamble and surprisingly blunt. Loki raises an eyebrow. Brodnir turns to regard Thor.

 

“We’ve had several other commissions come in. Some pay for toys more than they do even for weapons of legend.”

 

“Who.” Thor demands.

 

Brodnir taps his chin, “Can’t say.” He takes one more look at the deceptive simplicity of the metal, then leaves.

 

“Well,” Loki dissects, “who in the nine realms knows of Thor Odinson and the frost giant he keeps.”

 

Too many to account for.

 

\---

 

If his pace is brisk, it’s because he is trying to out-walk Thor without being obvious about it.

 

“Loki.” Thor catches up beside him. _When had Thor simply stopped referring to him as pet?_

 

They continue along the south wing corridor, and Loki puts in place a placid smile. “I selected a more casual outfit for you before leaving, you must be wanting a change of clothes, _Master._ ”

 

Thor knows Loki’s flagellating tongue too well now to take that tone at face value.

 

Loki wonders darkly at how many others in his place. In the cosmic injustice of things, it was just the yoke the conquered wore, the jewelry of it superficially impressed upon their conquerors’ conscience of distinguished treatment instead of the torture it was. Were the others seidr users too?

 

“What would you have of me? Were our positions reversed, and had Jotunheim won and that I were captive, you would order my hands cut off so that I may never wield Mjolnir.”

 

“I saved your life and you promised me a boon.”

 

“Which I said within reason and nothing political.”

 

An unease settles in Loki’s stomach.

 

Thor, not realizing anything amiss, “When will you realize that this is the best it can be for you?”

 

Loki swallows.

 

“And when will _you_ realize we’ve been walking for five minutes now without getting anywhere?” He’s right, they should’ve reached his rooms already.

 

Thor stops.

 

The view before them and behind was just one of infinite corridor. No one else but the two of them. It’s also absolutely quiet. The scenery outside seemed beautifully standard enough, until one could hear no songbird, see no movement.

 

Not a flicker, tingle, or hum.

 

“What’s the meaning of this?”

 

Loki approaches the colonnade, inspecting the physical: the marble’s natural striations were too uniform and going from one pillar to another, identical. Just as a tree to the next may look generically similar, no two came down to the same branching positions or directions. “We’re caught in someone else’s illusion this time.”

 

“Who would dare?” Thor growls.

 

“We just came from a congregate of seidr users.” Loki retorts, putting some distance between the two of them.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

Loki walks until he’s about a room’s length away. “Interesting.” It’s faint, but Thor can still hear him. “What is?” He shouts.”

 

Loki returns to his side, not about to yell back. “If I choose to, the distance between us becomes real, but if we proceed together, no amount of ground covered will bring us any closer to our destination.”

 

Thor looks shifty eyed, not entirely comprehending.

 

“It means we probably shouldn’t be separated to a point where we can no longer see each other.” He looks out. “It will be no use that way either. You can try to fly out on Mjolnir, but once you cross the horizon line, this corridor will merely come back as if you’ve travelled the circumference of a small globe, only one cannot guarantee that I will be waiting here for you.”

 

That’s the only part Thor needed to understand, for he takes Loki by the waist and draws him toward his chest. Looking around as if their captor would have a change of heart and pop into their view in a cloud of purple smoke.

 

It was like a Mobius strip: one looped continuum, but two sub-realities. Once Thor or he becomes isolated from each other, they will occupy a different plane, by which the caster can just entrap them separately for an illusion within an illusion.

 

“Calm down.” Loki shoves. Not willing to be treated like a damsel. “We’re not in any immediate danger.”

 

They were two insects in a glass jar. Someone was observing them, but the glass was thick, and warped the viewer to the viewed so that they cannot observe back.

 

Thor grips Mjolnir and takes an experimental swing. It makes contact, but nothing about the stone takes any damage. Thor at least stops after the third one – quicker than Loki anticipated. The expression on his face implores some explanation.

 

“Your senses are being tampered with. All of them: primarily touch and sight.” In that, it wasn’t too different than the sexual settings he created for them, except that all this existed on another illusionary layer to entrap fully. Loki has to give it to the caster. It was not wildly energy intensive, but so long as they kept their thoughts straight and didn’t scramble the facets, it would hold neatly. They had not been transported out of the palace, but they were likely walking in circles together, and – Loki can only assume – invisible to the eyes of anyone passing by.

 

Loki didn’t seem as worried about the situation as Thor was, perching on the balustrade as one leg kept its balance against the ground. He looked out, contemplative, and stared into the bright noon sky. Thor is unsure whether he should take Loki’s cue or try to summon a storm.

 

“I don’t suppose you understand the capabilities of your realms’ own sorcerers to give us any idea of who is doing this?”

 

Whenever they were summoned, usually it was for a matter that combined their abilities or to bolster the Allfather’s own seidr. Very rarely did one individual do the spellcasting. This was another difference between the warrior class and the generals they followed. So then, was this one person’s doing, or a collaboration? When they get out of here Thor intends to find out, but meanwhile, his silence tells Loki everything. He doesn’t understand how Loki can be so calm about the situation. Sparks fly from Mjolnir’s head.

 

“Stop that.” Loki commands.

 

“Why should I. It has yet to prove ineffective.” Thor refutes, charging up.

 

“Because it’s what’s expected and will only work to further frustrate. If you think you’ve expended all options you’ll lash out in desperation. Thunder and lightning are physical forces. We are not dealing with the physical.”

 

Thor’s powers abate, but his muscles are still tense as a tripwire.

 

“Understandably, you might want to reconsider the state of your own security if someone else, an enemy, can ensnare you like this.” Loki breathes deep. These past few weeks have made it very clear that current affairs on Asgard were far from the norm, but he couldn’t see the picture. All he could see was the frame.

 

“If we’re not in danger of bodily harm, then what are we in danger of?”

 

From what Loki could tell, they were not being led down towards something, their reasoning and thought were not being manipulated, their limbs were still their own to command, there wasn’t even the sense of claustrophobia in terms of setting.

 

Loki’s eyes go to Thor’s, where he sees himself reflected there.

 

_Why the both of them?_

 

_Why not wait until they were separated?_

 

_Thor would be absolutely useless at freeing himself._

 

_Loki would be no better._

 

To think a moment ago they had been butting heads over the torque.

 

The torque.

 

He whispers the answer to himself as he looks down at his chest.

 

Raises his head to look at Thor again.

 

“It’s a test.”

 

“A test?”

 

Two things click: that he is a curiosity and that he remains bound.

 

“More specifically, a test for me.”

 

As rats in a maze.

 

To Thor, even worse than being held, was the concept of being toyed with. The idea of a test or a game meant playing by someone else’s set of rules, but according to Loki, his inclusion did nothing to forward things, except…

 

“You’ll have to allow me something significant.”

 

Several thoughts jolt through Thor at once: whether Loki is taking advantage of the situation to take over the reigns of his seidr, how safe is it to agree to the crossfire, can he rely on Loki for this.

 

“I know you know nothing about what it takes to build up a mastery of the craft, but this is not amateur hour, and there’s no guarantee that once I start to rend this enchantment, the original spell caster won’t fight back.”

 

In the end, what choice did he have?

 

“Alright.”

 

It takes a moment for Thor’s words to ring in his head like a clarion bell before he starts to feel it. The torque releasing – reluctantly – its stopper on his magic.

 

From the vessel of liberty, it pours and pours and pours.

 

His hands curl in front around the flow of seidr like fingers along a glass stem, he tips his head back slowly and drinks to the dregs. The hem of his robes billow by a nonexistent wind. A different flavour of static than electricity settles on the tongue. Loki licks his lips at the crackle of his energy signature.

 

Thor’s presence dissolves on his periphery. He narrows his gaze and crops the false-reality before them, closes them and sees their container for what it is. The glass jar was an inadequate comparison; the ordinary landscape and architecture twists and radiates like a trefoil knot along which he pushed his magic through to fill the space and sense for him this enclosure.

 

A hand on his shoulder from behind startles him into opening his eyes again.

 

Thor looks at him with something like confidence. Or was it wariness instead? He turns around so that they are front to front. Loki cannot communicate to Thor what it’s like, to rely on what your eyes and touch can’t tell you, so he lets Thor’s hand cup his face – that he may take assurance in the unspoken promise that was Loki’s ability to free them.

 

He refocuses.

 

Where sight did not serve him, it was black against the blackness all around. Along the curvature of the surface seemed almost to catch a light that wasn’t there, whose quality changed like the distortion of a soap bubble, only, without any of the color, the transparency, nor the delicacy.

 

So he gathers an experimental degree of power— 

 

— and strikes.

 

It was like hurling a stone at tar: what give the impact created was quickly settled over, as if it had never been disturbed.

 

Loki smiles, for it was not impenetrable.

 

This time it’s vertigo that slips him out of focus. He stumbles against Thor as the corridor starts to twist like the inside of something alive. Thor grabs his wrist in a punishing grip and catches at one of the balusters for a firm hold. They were on a tilt that was becoming sharper.

 

Loki forces down the pit of his stomach that was threatening to jump into his chest. Instead he lets the ignition of his seidr catch and launches. While flameless, it licked and devoured the fake backdrop and spreads to the layer behind it.

 

For lack of a better verb, the scene starts to burn into black, which itself, burnt into translucency.

 

Thor, sensing that they’ve only gone from the frying pan and into the fire, “What are you doing?”

 

“I want to know who’s behind th--”

 

Anonymity threatened, the damaged scene starts to shake and collapse dangerously like an earthquake as they hang precariously at a ninety degree drop.

 

Mjolnir hung at his belt, out of reach. One hand strained around the stone while the other clutched Loki, who was looking down at the void, eating inward to where they were, just waiting for his fall into the event horizon beyond. He wrenches his gaze away to look up at Thor. Those alarmed eyes tell him what he already knows.

 

 _Don’t let go_.

 

That hand and wrist were too damn slender. He’s going to start commanding Loki eat more.

 

“There’s no time!”

 

There really wasn’t. But.

 

“I need the rest!”

 

Thor casts his face up to where his grip was struggling to keep them anchored. They will not be lost to the darkness here, unknown and endless, and roars “Then take it!”

 

As a sword ablaze still white hot from the forge, Loki thrusts with all his might.

 

One.

 

Two.

 

Three.

 

Unlike when they walked into their trap with the door open and unsuspecting, they stumble out of it when the plane of existence inverts completely and their own, now reliable sense of touch, falter at the veritably solid ground beneath their feet.

 

The air Loki heaves in is no longer stagnant, but his head is spinning and his body seizes with the torque’s recall of his seidr, snapping shut like a pocket watch. Every nerve singed along a needle’s course.

 

Why was he still falling?

 

But the ground never meets him in time.

 

A pair of arms catch him.

 

Thor is smiling, breathless, “You did it.”

 

If he could have held onto consciousness for another second, he may have identified the expression on Thor’s face as pride. 

 

The darkness takes him instead. He no longer has any energy left to fight it.

 

\---

 

Thor catches his back and sweeps his arm beneath his legs just in time. Loki’s weight was nothing to him, but the action and what it followed staggers him and drives him to his knees. That slight body laid slack. Loki’s head fell to the side, angled away from Thor and for a startled second, Thor thinks the worst before finding the chest’s steady heartbeat.

 

Remembering where they were and where they needed to go, Thor holds onto him tight and rises on his feet.

 

\---

 

He’s hearing voices under water-like – echoed and distorted, and distant.

 

But his mind was a fog and his thoughts as substantial as smoke.

 

His consciousness momentarily surfaces, bleary and confused... He must have fallen asleep as the falling snow blanketed him. The crisp white is comforting however, and he doesn’t mind closing his eyes again a little longer.

 

\---

 

Eir had said that Loki would be fine, after taking a reading of all his vitals and monitoring him in the healing wing for a night.

 

Loki had recovered motionlessly, without even a movement beneath the eyelids to suggest dreams in sleep.

 

_It is not ideal to let such a volume of power release and withdraw at the snap of a finger._

 

Thor eased his form onto the bed back in his rooms. She said it’d be easier this way: to draw less attention and would be less startled upon waking – which he would shortly. Straightening, he surveyed his Jotun. Considering all that had partaken here, something a simple and innocent as sleeping was all the sudden inordinately profound. Other small touches as well. Thor can’t resist running his hand through Loki’s hair as he positioned his head on the pillows. Those tresses were dark as ink, and as he rubs a strand between thumb and forefinger, half expects it to come away stained.

 

He sits on the edge and reaches out to press the back of his hand to Loki’s forehead. There was nothing to indicate ill health, but Thor has never seen slumber so naturally still and serene like something in an illustration. His hand travels down to stroke the side of his face, lingering there. He doesn’t distrust Eir’s words regarding Loki’s release, but the bonds of sleep were very much still secure.

 

And he still has so many questions.

 

But in the meantime, he waits.

 

\---

 

To a Jotun asleep in the snow, the weight of each descending flake, one by one, must seem like the most gradual of embraces, until slowly, ever so slowly, it encases you in a layer that builds, snug as it is light, quiet as it is holy. After all, Loki never knew Farbauti. He prefers to think of his dam being Jotunheim herself.

 

How long has it been since he’s rested like this? Been resting like this?

 

It’s said that each Jotun has in their heart a shard of primordial, everlasting, ice. It protects them from the cold and makes it a part of them. The cold is a soothing mother, a numbing father. Winter takes care of its own, reigning as the season supreme.

 

But when awareness of imminent danger seeps in, it breaks the stillness of the frozen surface into a thousand jagged shards.

 

Loki jolts awake.

 

It’s not the dark branches against a night sky he sees, nor their hollow rattle along a bitter wind he detects. He’s tucked in a grand bed, fur upon fur, a low fire crackling in the hearth. Muted gold catches on the light of every surface, from the floors to the ceiling to the furniture, to the figure beside him with hair spun from the same material.

 

Thor.

 

His gaze stops there with the inevitability of a leaf falling to the ground.

 

That’s right, they had been…they had been… Loki closes his eyes and breathes out slowly.

 

Nothing.

 

He feels perfectly, dreadfully…normal again. So then it’s all locked away once more. Would it have been better to feel a hypersensitized ravine, centerless jitters? Likely not. But at least that would have spared him from the cognitive dissonance of…this.

 

“How do you feel?”

 

Loki answers belatedly, disappointed, “Fine.”

 

The moment suspends between them.

 

“Must--“

 

“Th—"

 

Thor looks at him awkwardly, indicates for Loki to continue, only for Loki to glower in rebellion.

 

“Thanks for…” Thor does not wear bashfulness well “getting us out of that.”

 

“Must be convenient when you can simply command your pet sorcerer to transport you out of harm, ogle at the pyrotechnics, and then trot back to your quarters as if one of us hasn’t just been scorched.”

 

Thor visibly winces. “I had Eir confirm your health and safety first.” as if that might make it any better.

 

“Were you really in such a hurry to shackle me again? Then your gratitude has already worn thin.”

 

It was selfish and brash. Thor knows. But the possibility of Loki successfully escaping him right after had been too real in the moment, for Thor to do anything but take precautions. Loki looks at him warily from the bed. Thor feels a pang of guilt for their positions. Formally, he could not be said to be in the wrong, but…

 

The incorporeal leash he held – its strap in his hands. Thor no longer has the desire to yank its recipient to him, but the connection that binds them, like a string pulled taut, while he doesn’t want it cut, would rather it loosen. Only, his concern about it being severed with his unawares causes him to draw back to reaffirm its linkage, much to the others’ displeasure.

 

Loki pets the hide along and against the grain of what was once a magnificent beast, in what Thor is starting to understand as a self-calming action.

 

_When will you realize that this is the best it can be for you?_

 

What was Loki going to reply to that originally, before.

 

He doesn’t know. But the answer to this next question might tell him more.

 

“Do you still intend to honor your word regarding the last debt you owe me?”

 

Thor nods.

 

Loki pauses. He’s been thinking about it for some time now. He has to do this, because no one else will, and in the end, it is all that he can still do.

 

“Take me to where my father fell.”

 

Thor tenses. It wasn’t political, but it was Jotunheim.

 

But then he recalls the expression on Loki’s face when it had all been falling apart around them, the way Thor caught Loki above the ether, and he had been so afraid, truly, in that moment, that his grip would not close tight around that hand soon enough. And it had been fear in Loki’s eyes too, before he was stopped in his descent. To be replaced by trust.

 

It was trust borne of desperation, but trust nonetheless.

 

Nothing had changed.

 

Everything had changed.

 

“Very well.”

 

And all questions Thor meant to ask for himself die before they can be voiced, no longer seeming important.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *inserts Zuko blank scroll gif, captioned: Where's the sex??*
> 
> Next chappie guys, next chappie.
> 
> \---
> 
> I might take a bit of a break after this. I've got two things coming up for October, one involving somnophilia, and the other involving ghost-incubus Loki (is that a thing, well it is now).


	9. Chapter 9

 

He tugged the leather cowl tighter around his face, turning his head away from the gales that it may protect him better still, and wondered if they looked as wretched as he felt, stumbling through the snowy terrain.

 

It was fitting that Loki was seeking a scene of death, because the bleakness of their stark existence served to remind him of it constantly. The wind tasted like nails and clawed at them just as ferociously, but he was still Loki and had his own quality of stubbornly enduring even against the forces that he called home.

 

The sky could’ve been high and pale, or low and faint, but regardless it was imperceptible in the blizzard that whited out every direction. Thor grit his teeth, wondering, not for the first time, whether they were lost. For that was the thing about snow: put one tired tread in front of the other, strained imprint after imprint but look back and your tracks are already filling over, in an expanse devoid of landmarks, with no way of knowing how far you’ve come, how far you’ve yet to go, or if you’re even going the right way.

 

In a desert, one could see sand and sky. Here they could see nothing.

 

Thor shouts, “Is there no easier way towards Utgard?”

 

Loki’s voice carries back “Not since your army collapsed the underground network system.” Like it or not, the truth was that their timing was already fortuitous. Travel was at least possible in the after-path of Ymir’s breath: a circling ghost that was more fury than curse, and more curse than storm.

 

Even if Loki were a normal-sized Jotun, this would not have been easy, as is, he struggles the same as Thor in speed of progress. The harsh wind drove ice crystals against their cheeks, and with them the sting of a thousand bloodless cuts until the tempest numbs their faces beyond pain. Through it, Thor can only trust that Loki knows where he is leading them.

 

It’s not worth losing the body heat and moisture to talk. He doesn’t hear anything other than the flurries’ howls. Thor makes his way stepping in the prints that Loki tracks, every once in a while raising his head to identify his guide, visibility poor.

 

Thor doesn’t even realize Loki has stopped until he’s bumped into him. He looks up at what has broken their tedium and finds himself merely looking at the white of a snowbank. “This?”

 

Loki studies it a moment before replying, “You’ll have to uncover it first.”

 

Thor’s arm, stiff with cold and inactivity, hesitantly reaches for Mjolnir, taking longer than usual to reach a speed high enough in whirling her about the strap. Mjolnir wakes up lazily, metal uru cold to the core. As Thor whips the snow away, the craggy mouth of an ice cave offers them welcome reprieve.

 

It should have been a celebratory sight, but dread and wariness trickles down Thor’s spine.

 

Loki notices and an amused smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “Don’t worry too much about that, it was my way of warding off any creatures that may have wanted to use it as a shelter.”

 

He taps the torque on his chest, torso bare, and Thor, nods his permission.

 

Loki needs it so that the protections in place recognize his magical signature. “If you don’t want to be blocked out, step through alongside me.”

 

Thor doesn’t think he’s ever felt such alleviation from the elements than having passed through that threshold. Seidr washes over him like the secret entrance of a waterfall. The sounds of the snow storm outside fade to white noise, and within the pocket of this refuge, everything has become quiet at last.

 

He looks around him. Glowing stones light up inwards the tunnel and Loki follows his enchantments. The cave is not deep and discounting the extra care he takes with his steps, it does not take long before they are in the main chamber.

 

Kneeling down, he ensorcelled a pale flame to life in a firepit. It’s a superficial comfort, after all, Loki had only ever used one as a source of lighting than out of any true necessity for heat.

 

All the glowing stones embedded into the rock wall had lit up by now, and Thor could see the features of a makeshift abode that while primal, could have almost been described as cozy. The limestone pillars reinforced in a sheath of ice, and the stalactites above as icicles, once the cavern was provided with an inner light, their surroundings shone. Other ice fixtures were shaped as smooth surfaces to rest upon, or against, and several fur throws adorned them.

 

Loki lovingly drapes a fine pelt over himself and nestles in “I used these dens during sojourns outside the palace. We’ll wait out the storm here.” 

 

“How long might that be?” asks Thor, finding his voice and choosing one similarly before sitting in front of the fire.

 

Loki sits beside. “I should clarify: not wait out no, we will instead wait until it’s at its farthest point from us. It will be easier and should only be a day.”

 

So it was to be: Thor gets to willingly camp out on Jotunheim. Would wonders ever cease.

 

No matter the overnight setting, a campsite or an inn, a fire was always a welcome sight: its glow a beacon. It also begged conversation however, and there are things that Thor can no longer hold his tongue on. Now that they are as far away and secluded from Asgard as they possibly could be: “What happened back then and why did it happen?”

 

Of course, Loki had been wondering that too. The only clue, which may as well have been no clue at all, was the trefoil knot design of their prison, the same celtic shape of which was engraved on Thor’s hammer. “How common is that motif among Asgard?”

 

Thor frowns “Rather common. It is of Odin’s design, and thus proliferates everywhere from the symbolically ceremonial to the frivolously ornamental.”

 

Disappointedly expectant, “How…elucidating.”

 

It’s just as any sorcerer under Odin’s command, including the man himself. Which left…many possibilities to work with and not an inkling of insight into any one in particular. “How many high mages does your father command?”

 

“They represent the best in the realms. Father retains them for their services at a high price but they are not necessarily called upon often. There are eight total, counting him.”

 

“But there are nine realms.”

 

Thor looks over to Loki “Father never had anyone from Jotunheim.”

 

“Ah.” Loki stokes the flames directly with a caress of his hand in the fire, letting them lick between the fingers. “Odin’s tastes for conquering are well known, how might you define his inclination towards…collecting.”

 

Thor jerks the long-haired hide of some beast tighter around his warming body. “He wouldn’t.”

 

Not that Loki is going to take Thor’s conflicted word for it, but then that’s eight suspects. More to work with than he’d like. Not eliminating the poisoning plot previous which involved the five Vanir, bringing them to thirteen. Thirteen trained seidr masters, all of whom he knows little, next to nothing about – a predicament unhelpfully shared by Thor as well.

 

That’s to say nothing about those higher up who may be giving the orders, and even less on motive.

 

“You have the freedom of access to those who can better profile these people than I do. You’d best start asking questions from someone you can trust and quickly.”

 

Thor knows exactly who to go to: Frigga. Once they are done here. He rubs his hands together and detects full sensation returning to his fingertips. He’s thought this next part through and through: “Should anything happen again when I’m not with you, you may use your seidr in self-defence, to disarm or incapacitate, but not to kill.”

 

Loki hums his affirmation. It was only tactical after all. He would not thank the Odinson over crumbs as this.

 

“You had called it an illusion, why was it not like any illusionary magic I have experienced? If it’s as powerful as that, why did you not blithely march my men off a cliffside during the war?”

 

He smiles in disdain, “Don’t think I wouldn’t have if I could, but with illusionary magic, making a fool of the senses requires constructing the lie in the perception of the individual. With one target it’s effective, a small group is doable depending on the mastery of the caster, but with each successive mind to bend it becomes taxing from the scale and the intricacy required. At some point it’s easier to trigger an avalanche.”

 

Thor glares at him.

 

Loki glares back.

 

Before returning his hooded gaze to the smokeless fire, watching it dance in all the likeness of a real one. “Unlike waking from a dream if you die within the nightmare, it’s a brand of illusion where the consequences of perception become reality.”

 

Loki reaches an arm out from the white fur cloak to catch Thor’s hand in his, drawing it over the firepit. Thor is not burned. “Before you realized the fire was a false trick of the light, you were warmed by its familiar comfort all the same, were you not?”

 

“But now that you have revealed it, I can no longer continue to be so.” he replies ruefully, though it did illustrate Loki’s point nicely.

 

“I know it will take worse than that for you to freeze.” and draws back. Thor’s hand, released, brushes against the ice wolf’s coat, stilling there at the unparalleled softness. “Every magic user has their own style that becomes more recognizable with each encounter.”

 

“What’s yours?”

 

Most of what Thor has witnessed related to battle or hedonism. “Why don’t you give me greater allowances and then maybe you’ll see?”

 

Thor grunts. “I’ll consider it.”

 

Without any wood to consume, the fire burns without waning – a contradiction of sorts. Thor finds it oddly alluring. Not even a crackle to fill the silence.

 

“I was only three centuries old when my tutor found me in the courtyard. The falling snow eddied around me strangely.”

 

Thor studies Loki, expecting to hear more, but his expression is far away in remembrance. Thor feels caught on the beginning of a story that he doesn’t know the end of: it conjured such strange imagery, one that started with a small Jotun at play.

 

He has never been one for possibilities unrealized, but finds himself curious, “What would have become of you if the war had never happened?”

 

Loki’s smile turns bittersweet. “I should have enjoyed in full the limits of my station and bloodline. Supported father, and Helblindi after him, given my life in service to the throne, or until, whichever came first.”

 

That, Thor could have surmised. Loki is being intentionally vague.

 

“Do you not know of any designs Laufey meant for you personally?”

 

“He treasured me when it was just as easy otherwise. That itself is Jotunheim’s grace enough.”

 

Thor’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

 

Loki can’t tell if the oaf is being deliberately thick. He much rather preferred it when they were on the topic of doing away with Asgard’s army. “I’m sure it has not escaped notice that I am a runt. Rare for my kind.”

 

“No, but then might other runts be as much as an adversary as you?”

 

Right. The Odinson was working with a sample size of one here. “Many are deformed and with short life expectancies. Those are not as lucky as the ones who die quickly after birth, but then, they find ways to eke out a living.”

 

“Are there none yet healthy, such as yourself?”

 

“None in the years I’d been alive, and the centuries leading up to it. And that’s as much as you can tell, skin deep on the surface.” Indeed, it was something he privately questioned much of his life.

 

Thor’s bristles. “Why?”

 

“Don’t be dramatic. I shall be your bed slave until you tire.”

 

“ –Loki.”

 

He bites back, “You can force the truth should you choose, but know that it’s a moot point, prince.”

 

For it was. Should his life as he once had it continued on Jotunheim…well, there would have been no political lineage of his own to further. Laufey never brought up the topic of marriage, never needed to. It was understood that with their realm closed off from the others, a suitable match in size would never be found for the third prince. Loki wonders when precisely his father had to fight down the fear of his youngest being split open and skewered on the massive cock of any Jotun, from the nobility in his court, to the fishermen at the ocean’s coast, or the nomadic hunter tribes along the north range. What could he have even successfully taken other than the smallest finger of another frost giant in preparation? It was best not to linger upon such unpleasant prospects.

 

Pleasure aside, he had not the courage to muster up a more clinical solution for insemination. His pride would not. Stallions didn’t concern themselves over the pedigree of mules, so neither would he. There was no precedent for a Jotun runt being able to bear more Jotun runts. In that way, abstinence was just as effective as sterility.

 

He sighed.

 

To be his father’s favourite and yet the most forsaken. Which Norn had he offended before birth?

 

“No Odinson, I’m afraid there is no one else like me, nor will there be proceeding.”

 

It’s been decades since he reflected upon the non-issue. There were other ways he grew up to be useful, and he had been. For what it was worth in the end.

 

He’s no longer a child. Had stopped telling himself long ago, had stopped wishing at some point, for a companion, anyone, a head shorter or higher was acceptable, just someone who could’ve dispelled the feeling of loneliness that he wore as a second skin while growing up in a world of giants.

 

And now, though surrounded by those of his stature, he is more alone than ever.

 

The irony does not escape him.

 

Thor’s hand rests between them. Infuriatingly close and available.

 

Everything surrounding them is so familiar. Home. This could have been any one of his unannounced disappearances for days on end, journeying wherever he pleased, as sometimes, the royal courtyards just weren’t far enough.

 

The storm outside, borne of Ymir’s suffering, reaches a regularity to the ears. Perhaps it is even welcome, in as much that it may distract. But then, who was there to judge?

 

He finds Thor’s hand and wordlessly places the illusionary spell work on him. It tentatively moves up towards the rest of his body, seeping into Aesir skin. Thor looks up in question just as his eyes transition red, completing the image. Loki’s mouth opens a fraction in wonder, admiring his own handiwork. Would that perception could become reality here.

 

“Wh—"

 

Loki hushes him, “Don’t say anything. Don’t ruin this.” He moves in to straddle Thor’s lap, and uses both hands to cup the face colored in the shade of his own, fur slipping off one shoulder with the movement.

 

The sudden intimacy of the moment freezes Thor in his reaction. Loki is looking at him with such tenderness that was both quiet astonishment and sorrow. When he catches his reflection off the ice column in the corner of his eye, he finds out why.

 

It should repulse him, but somehow, Thor doesn’t have the heart to reject the glamor or tell Loki to remove it when he’s looking at him with that expression. Loki closes his eyes to place a gentle kiss on his lips while Thor’s widen further.

 

There is no teeth or tongue in it. A delicate contact of lips upon lips. The simplest of pleasures so full of intent that its initiator’s purpose couldn’t possible escape him. After all, there were other ways to keep warm in a cave in a company of two.

 

Thor buries his face in Loki’s neck and adds more, that column of skin tilting into his touch. Loki bites his lip to prevent his whimpers from spilling. Focuses instead on getting his hands to remove Thor’s clothing so that he can see more of the blue. With each item worked free, his heartbeat increases a degree.

 

As a Jotun, Thor was beautiful, blond locks and beard speaking to something exotic and wild. Thor had the effect of being enhanced by nudity rather than reduced, and now the cobalt skin of his build now made him seem even larger than life. Loki could have wept and fallen to his feet in worship.

 

Instead, he uses the back of his hand to stroke that face as the image lived and breathed with him, touched him, embraced him.

 

To ease the heaviness of what was about to happen, Loki does what he is best at, whether in reality, dreams, or prayer.

 

“Perhaps you are the son of a jarl, newly introduced to the court. From even before you set foot in the castle, father’s already made plans for us.”

 

Thor leaves the story weaving to Loki, letting their identities be transformed. His hand seeks out the plane of Loki’s torso, brushing over his nipple and rolling it between his fingers to hardness. Loki’s sentences come short and strained between breaths.

 

“We grew up together and your house welcomed the new ties with Laufey’s.”

 

Thor’s other hand moves up to the back of Loki’s head at the base where his braid began, gripping down and forcing Loki’s head up. He swallows. The pronounced bob of his throat the same as the nod of the head to Thor. Loki’s hand braces behind him against the stone floor, as hard as both their erections.

 

“Starting from playmate, to confidante, to personal guard.”

 

Thor thumbs the head of his cock, already leaking precome, and spreads the fluid over the crown. The rough pad of his skin tracing torturous motions along sensitive flesh. Loki is wet more ways than one and the second heat builds until it drips. Loki clings on to the bicep of Thor’s arm and starts to rock his hips.

 

“As close as sworn brothers.”

 

His pussy pulses with arousal. Thor slides in two fingers easily. Loki clenches and moves, trying to find friction. Thor’s heavy breathing fills the cave between lines of narration. The rocking motions become jerks; slick begins to travel down and coat Thor’s hand. The lips of Loki’s vulva swell with blood flow, fattening around and locking his fingers in deeper.

 

Loki moans before continuing “I’ve promised myself to you and you to me, long before any formal engagement.” and measures the girth of Thor’s darkened shaft. It feels like such a novel experience. He’s unable to close his hand around it, not until he tugs upwards towards the glans.

 

He never made a habit of encouraging these thoughts before Thor took him from his home, but then, his horizons have expanded since then, and now he wants to be unmade by that cock. Wants to beg for mercy on it.

 

“As a wedding gift, you’ve hunted down one of our rarest beasts. Its fur will never tarnish. Most who set out to do so never realize their folly in time until blood is staining the snow, swift jaws snapped around a jugular.”

 

Thor’s hand travels upwards and behind to grab him at the neck in the same way an animal apprehends another. The casual strength of it turns him on. A warrior class to be sure, no matter race. Brutish and savage, just like this desire that he had never given voice.

 

“And now, after a fresh kill and a quick clean, you fuck me on it.”

 

He obliges, parting the pelt from Loki’s body and forcing him down atop it.

 

Thor wants to savour this moment, relishes the sight of Loki laid on his back, knees wide in welcome. When Thor places himself between them, his hands force them even wider. The fur feels soft against his knees, but not as soft as the warmth of Loki’s entrance around his member as he enters, trying not to shove but would be forgiven if he did.

 

He had told himself to take it slow, but when he sinks in to the hilt, the consideration vaporizes instantly.

 

Thor’s unsure if Loki’s told all that he had wanted to tell, but nothing forms in his mind anymore. Not a word, or a yell, or a curse. Loki lies spread before him, mewling with each thrust, keeping one folded leg up as high as it will go. Thor is fascinated by the view past his abdomen, the thick, dark Jotun cock driving in and out of that juicy quim.

 

His cock.

 

He grunts with each stroke of the onslaught, now fully warmed by the exertion. Loki’s face is in a deep flush, mouth agape to take in the air that Thor keeps forcing out. Their brows are drawn: Loki’s in heartache, Thor’s in intensity.

 

Each thrust brought his balls slapping against that swollen cunt. Loki simultaneously strokes his own cock in counterpoint to Thor’s rhythm. The knowledge that Loki desired this as much as Thor did was more intoxicating than it had any right to be, given the discomforts of their setting and the futility of this fantasy. Loki’s mouth was done spinning tall tales, so Thor takes over in talking. Well, _growling_ words.

 

He called Loki the things he thought he wanted this character to say: brother, lover, intended. Eventually anything with more lengthy syllables were discarded and the only thing Thor calls him is _his_.

 

Each time he did, Loki bucked back to meet him. They fuck like snow hares in a burrow.

 

He comes in a dry sob, cock twitching against his stomach, cunt clenching on Thor’s ramrod prick. Thor only picks up speed. There was something so beautiful in the way Loki’s spine softens from its arch, the way his clenched fingers released his palm, the way his straining muscles went lax.

 

Thor spills with a shudder and buries his gasp into the hollow of Loki’s throat.

 

Loki keeps it there, not daring to voice anything that could prematurely shatter the moment, even as it is already threatening to break. Like looking at the last few seconds remaining to the minute on a clock face.

 

Time goes, and the cooling spend releases Loki from the spell. He cradles Thor’s head against his chest, clings to it and lets the illusion go. Shame replaces the stolen pleasure that never was and never could be.

 

The funeral is tomorrow.

 

At some point Thor rises off, and he is free to curl up on his side, facing the fire but unseeing, and sleep, the most furtive of thieves, comes to steal him away.

 

\---

 

When they emerge upon a more merciful wind, Loki takes the fur with him about his shoulders. The structure of each hair was perfectly smooth so that not even the softest of snow would stick to it. It covers him completely.

 

The travel on foot is easier when the wind was not nearly strong enough to fight them. They march for hours, not a word in between. Thor can tell it’s no longer the time or place, not with where they’re going and how it’s taken to get there.

 

Jotunheim’s battlefield and graveyard was unlike any others. There was not the black of destruction or the carnage of blood-stained ground. On the day when Thor had fought and won here, the sight was such, but now there was only the white of fallen bones upon the white of the windy snowscape, and the remains that protruded from it. The winds cycled and brought snow, but never enough to cover before it was blown away again.

 

The scene struck him as mythically tragic. As if great beasts in migration had been on a journey that would end in extinction. Their end was clean, their fates to be forgotten, except when an unlucky wayfarer came across it and wondered in awe.

 

Loki has imagined it a thousand times. Had seen what this plain looked like before and could supply his knowledge of what it would look like now. Nonetheless, he walks in solemnity. The weight of each foot in front of the other: as if his soles froze to the ground and his flesh ripped with the pain and fortitude it took to move forward.

 

He doesn’t allow himself to stumble once.

 

Loki goes towards his father’s skull. Laufey’s is easy to identify: as magnificent as an ibex among goats. His hand comes forth but pauses in reverence, stills in apology, and descends in grief.

 

There are faint nicks and scratches in the bone from being bare to Jotunheim’s elements. To think how long his father and brethren have been subjected to this. Not knowing peace in death. Loki’s hands trace the grooves in Laufey’s horns one last time: the same as he used to do when alone in private with his father as a boy.

 

Then steps away and retreats, turning his gaze towards the grey skies. Flecks brush his lips, needle fine, so delicate that you’d never spy them on open light.  

 

Thor watches from a distance. The air stills. The entire realm, and he along with it, holds its breath in the moment. The clouds change texture, shift into a subtle gradation of gentle fullness and anticipation.

 

Loki raises an outstretched arm, and a silver flake, perfect and large, lands on his open palm. The sky glitters amethyst and falls down white.

 

Loki’s world kindly crumbles.

 

Millenia later, Thor will remember the snow and know it as the instant he saw the same beauty in it that frost giants did. A purity in essence and nature such that he had never seen before, and would have never seen if not for the only other soul standing before him. Hardly believing any of it real.

 

Otherworldly.

 

He scarcely dares to interrupt the vision with the condensation of his breaths. It builds and builds in powdered burial. Hours that feel like the lifetimes of each snowflake’s descending waltz. Twilight turns into night as the mass grave turns into moonlit Narnia.

 

Loki’s figure is outlined in lambent against the black night. Thor’s eyes have never left him. He was no longer constrained by description of what was god or mortal, but became a regnant who resided in between, unbound by reality’s chains and untied by eternity’s strings.

 

From below, the falling white from darkness above felt like the infinite stars floating down instead. Manifold magic.

 

But even snow on Jotunheim cannot fall unceasingly over this specific area. The enchantment ends as the night sky clears. Closing his eyes he saw nothing but an empty expanse. Opening them he saw the same in white. Emotion reached a strange pitch until it was beyond his finite self to register, but Loki finds balance on a tenuous equilibrium, knowing he’s done what needed to be done.

 

Surrounding them is a silence so absolute that it could have been a separate entity itself rather than merely the negation of noise. When he calls Thor’s name it is like discovering sound all over again.

 

His final action is to ensure the surface with a line of skating fire that melts and instantly refreezes the topmost layer. It encrusts the departed within a layer of softness as their final resting place.

 

As it comes time to leave, Loki does not look back and departing in solitude was as easily done as choosing any direction. They dent the landscape piece by piece, putting Jotunheim behind.

 

\---

 

On their return to Asgard, the evening of, they share a soft bed again.

 

But the melancholy was brought back with them. For Loki would let Thor kiss him freely yet closed his eyes when doing so.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I've officially reached the point where each chapter becomes successively harder to write, not to say I won't do my darnest, but man this chapter gave me trouble. Always a pleasure and privilege to write for those reading however. I'm back!


	10. Chapter 10

 

__

 

 _There are worse things._ He tells himself.

 

 _There are worse things than initiating sex with your enslaver_. He’s naked and spread and yielding.

 

To the Odinson’s credit, he was being soft, gentle even with their coupling. Taking more care for his pet’s pleasure than his own, although his own was just as hard and established inside him. Loki’s traitorous body has already spilled into Thor’s hands.

 

_There are worse things._

Such as having to walk through the halls and grounds an interloper.

 

Having to compose himself, stiff and proper, preened and primped to be the envy of all servants.

 

Having to look past anyone who enters his field of vision so that he does not see the lustful contempt on their hypocritical faces.

 

Having to serve at the dining hall in front of everyone and put up impenetrable shields of indifference.

 

Having to wind himself up to go through the motions.

He’s learned that Thor will leave him well enough alone during sleep, and Loki was tired. Exhausted. Yet it played into Thor’s egotism that Loki often slept deep and long after sessions.

 

So he suggestively ran a hand over Thor’s bare chest, initiating.

 

It doesn’t take much, it never does. The thunder god is not used to sexual refusal and has certainly never turned one down. Thor’s arm slides around his waist, pulling them closer. His eyes searching. As if he needed the permission.

 

Loki parts for him. Begs for it sweetly the way he knows Thor likes to hear. Delicately audible moans and whimpers as Thor’s fingers delve into his vacant hole over and over, cock slotting into the other.

 

 _There are worse things than seeking oblivion by the hands of your enemy_. He tells himself before succumbing to the very one. Thor kisses the nape of his neck, shuddering his orgasm deep.

 

For the peace that it bought afterwards, sex was a small price to pay.

 

\---

 

By the golden sunbeams of Asgard’s morning streaming through the vaulted windows to aureate all that it touched, he does up his clothes proper and sets the final clasp in place before making to leave. It’s lovely and fragile in a way Thor’s begins to appreciate anew.

 

He reaches the doors and pauses, hand upon the intricate relief of Yggdrasil upon the carved yew wood.

 

He turns and looks back to the bed, casting his eyes on the slumbering figure curled on his side.

 

His lips press thin before leaving as quietly as possible.

 

\---

 

Frigga is seated by her loom, sorting thread into colors that she will use to begin a new pattern’s weave. Thor wonders if it will be a depiction of an epic, perhaps that of a rich landscape, or maybe an intricate family insignia. So many colors were represented – red golds, jeweled greens, silvered blues, ivory whites, and many, many more. He cannot tell from palette alone what the theme of the final picture will be, but he knows that he will marvel at its reveal. Frigga’s artistry at her medium was the best in the Nine and some works took years to create. This is looking to be one of them.

 

He approaches from behind, hoping not to break her concentration, to nuzzle and then kiss her on the cheek. She laughs. As if her own grown son, with the tread of a warrior of Asgard, could successfully step gingerly around her. She playfully swats him away where he then lowers himself to sit on the ground near a basket, helping. When he was a boy too small to understand, care, or be judged for being in the company of women and their arts, Frigga would tell him stories like this as he stole glances at how elegantly her fingers moved. A playful fact not necessarily known to many, but Frigga was also an absolute demon at cat’s cradle.

 

“Somehow I don’t think you’re here to watch me demonstrate how to do the fishnet.”

 

No matter how many times she showed him, he was always fated to fumble it into a tangle by his own hands. He begins wrapping red thread around a tall wooden spindle instead. That was easy enough.

 

“No,” he replies, hesitant, looking down at his progress, “I was hoping you’d be able to tell me a little more about father’s seidr masters.”

 

Her expression becomes pensive. “It had seemed such grand potential at the time.”

 

Thor looks up at her, eyes inquisitive. The same eyes that begged more at the turning point of a mystery or the cliff-hanger of an adventure.

 

“The initiative had been to attract the Nine’s brightest minds to Asgard, for seidr masters also happen to be scholars. Your father selected those with the greatest talents to come here and develop technologies that could then be shared between the realms. Of course, none from Jotunheim was received, for the one who was to be gifted with the degree of talent was not yet born, and relations with Jotunheim were still sour. In the earliest years, the collaborations between them produced volumes of literature on seidr that are hosted in the royal library, saw the physics-defying architecture of this city, and gave us the Bifrost – a means to travel between worlds in a heartbeat even to non-magic users, transporting groups and goods along with it.”

 

She sighs, seeming all the sudden younger in her wistfulness, yet older in the effort it took to release it.

 

“We had dreamed of collective advancement that could then incentivise newfound cooperation between the systems. A Bifrost built for each realm opening the pathways for trade. The flow of knowledge, culture, and prosperity together that would trod upon the fear that was attached to Asgard’s name, so often whispered after a show of respect.”

 

That all sounded very good and proper to Thor.

 

“But then xenophobia as prudence, and security as conservatism began to spread throughout the inner courts and upper councils. One’s enthusiasm for travel and exchange brought into question their loyalty and exaltations of Asgard’s superiority, which became paramount to be upheld at all costs. Fraternity was considered a charming ideal, but friendly rivalry ultimately more practical.”

 

“Finally, in the back of your father’s mind was the technology of the Bifrost and that if, in its worst case scenario, it was unleashed by Asgard’s potential enemies – which even he had to admit, was not a negligible number, and their allied efforts, would’ve have overturned all that he built. Once the fear was planted it was never fully uprooted. And so we fell far short of our intended sights. Now he keeps the seidr masters on Asgard, bound by magical oath to never share what they have learned.”

 

Thor had never known any of this before. “And now? What does he use them for?”

 

“To keep the upper hand.” The implications of that statement she doesn’t say. He already knows. _By any means._

 

“Father has never let me spend much time with any of them. They’re so rarely involved in everyday court matters either.”

 

“They are dangerous Thor. He doesn’t call on them for ordinary things. But thankfully they are also content.”

 

And there was his opening: “They are dangerous how?”

 

“It’s been centuries. They have all had time to learn from each other as well as innovate new forms of creative seidr. I can only imagine, given nothing else to officially do here, that they spend their days continuing to innovate. By now they are experts in their native crafts and more.”

 

It seemed the answers he sought were not nearly as straightforward as he hoped. “Any history of their individual talents?”

 

The corner of her lips quirks a smile “There is, of course, always the library with books they have written, the contents of which are free of all restrictions to your access.”

 

Right.

 

“Forgive me for not having all the answers. I find them unsettling and their movements can’t be traced. Your father has said he would rather I not keep company with them. As such, they are even more enigmatic than they should be.”

 

“Is father himself not worried?”

 

“The oaths that they have all taken guarantees that he, his family, and Asgard cannot come to harm. Odin performed them himself in the earliest days, and that is your father’s specialty: blood magic.”

 

Her hands stop and she presses them to her lap. “It was perhaps his wisest decision.”

 

Thor can’t help but wonder if someday, in seeking to repair the mistakes of the past with a future of righteousness, whether history will fault him for trying.

 

“Will I have to one day also turn to their magics?”

 

 _‘I hope not._ ’ she thinks.

 

“As you see fit.” she says.

 

\---

 

He stares glumly at his emptied tankard, reflection dull in its pewter make. It wasn’t the first time Thor had been told to seek answers in books, but he doubts even if he had been the most attentive and keen student during seidr lessons, that it would have helped going forward with what are undoubtedly magically advanced and pedantic texts. Nor does he have the leisure time to dedicate himself to this area of research.

 

Neither is he sure of why he didn’t simply tell his mother, upfront, what had happened. Perhaps it is because he doesn’t want her to worry. Perhaps because he doesn’t quite know what exactly he should be worried about. Perhaps it is because if word got to his mother then it would surely get to his father. And despite everything else, they should keep their own cards close. Whatever those cards may be.

 

Volstagg, beside him, gives him a playful jostle from the side, mistaking his moodiness for an unsatisfactory state of sobriety. He was alone for once and amongst friends again, communally dining. Around the table are the faces of several familiar lads that he ought to share a drink with and build camaraderie. Fandral winks at a servant girl to refresh their drinks, rewarding her with a kiss when she finishes the rounds and tops off his.

 

Ale foam spills over the top of their cups. For the rest of the party, the atmosphere is effervescent and jolly without the stiff, icy presence of Thor’s collared servant. “It’s been some nights since we’ve seen you yet. Where have you tucked away your Jotun?” comes the question from a young bearded face that Thor can’t recall the name of.

 

He keeps his answer curt and smiles awkwardly. “He’s resting.” And resumes sipping hurriedly. Around him whistles abound and coarse, ribald chuckles are heard.

 

Another faceless voice he doesn’t turn to hear the question from, “Is it the blue skin color or the dual sex that keeps things novel?” Thor grins and bears it, grip around the handle of his drink harder than necessary. “Quite.” Someone yells another from their seat further down the table’s length “Is he a maiden’s rosebud pink down there or a tart’s rusted red?” Sif pointedly changes the subject to inquire about their waiting wives at home. Recognizes the strain in his previous answers more readily than the rest – for they are drunk, and loud, and this has long been established as their obnoxious style of talk. She’s grown accustomed to it, but Thor clearly no longer is.

 

Very rarely has she had to intervene on Thor’s behalf like such.

 

Not that long ago he would have rowdily partaken in such subject matters. Going into sordid detail, trying to make the others envious, coming up with lurid couplets or a few lines of crass verse. Suddenly it all seemed so juvenile. Distasteful even.

 

He thinks back to Loki. The two moments of bittersweet divinity in that night at the garden and the snowed-in stolen intimacy on Jotunheim.

 

It was so recent and yet so surreal it that became hard to believe that it had been but a few days ago. The last he’d seen of Loki before leaving for the dining hall, he had been deep asleep huddled in the furs. Undisturbed.

 

He no longer has any interest in remaining, and abruptly rises to leave. In his wake is a graceless hush. With those wondering what they may have said to agitate their prince.

 

On the way back he stops by the kitchens.

 

\---

 

He wakes when the weight and heat of another’s body nearby shifts him to consciousness. He only knows that it is dark. Not how long into night or how short until day. Heavy arms support him into a seated position. “Thor?” he mumbles.

 

“You need to eat.” He urges, with an expression that looks suspiciously like concern. Beside him was a golden platter filled with what looked like was at least one of every item available, and a second of those that he had supposed might be particular favourites.

 

“Thank you, your grace.” Tentatively selecting for whatever was low effort.

 

The spread was impressive for two people let alone one, but it seems Thor had already eaten for he leaves Loki to do so by himself.

 

Loki finds that he has very little appetite but takes in enough to satisfy.

 

He needs the short input of energy, and despite the culinary excellence that is Asgard’s finest, it all tastes like ashes.

 

\---

 

It seemed that Loki had not quite yet had his fill. For after his bath and change of clothes, Loki is wordlessly drawing him near. Hands on Thor’s hips, gaze on Thor’s cock.

 

Both of them possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the way the other’s body responded, and they put it to use as experts well learned as opposed to students’ rigid memorization. Loki knew just the right pressure between a pull and a press that had Thor’s balls seizing up. Thor knew just the exact trail of kisses down the middle pathway of Loki’s chest and navel to have his hips cant towards him. Illusions or none, rapture is a truth and ecstasy is a promise.

 

Yet ecstasy is a strange high. What word was there for when the feeling of another was so breathtaking to the point where you could barely stand it, deep as you are inside them already and wanting deeper still?

 

Thor drives his thrusts into Loki, watches carefully as his head is thrown back, as he clutches his shoulders for all he’s worth. When did Thor stop seeing sex as merely an act of pleasure?

 

Though as Thor tilts Loki’s chin down to join them in a kiss and looks into those eyes, he knows he has not reached it yet. No one watching could accuse either of being perfunctory or impersonal, but as surely as he now recognizes something in its absence, it confuses him just as he doesn’t remember what that may have even felt like with any other woman. Was it possible to long for something in abstraction despite never having known its attainment?

 

Loki’s breath hitches.

 

It almost is, but it isn’t.

 

He comes.

 

It almost was, until it wasn’t.

 

Thor cries out upon the rivet of pain and pleasure.

 

He doesn’t get any closer than within that body.

 

\---

 

Morning comes again. It would’ve been unwelcome had it made a difference. Loki is exhausted and intent on staying in Thor’s rooms. He was always awake, he just didn’t open his eyes. Or no…it’s the other way around: he was always asleep, he just didn’t close them.

 

He blinks, dazed, to test if he still could.

 

Thor had left his side, but the place where he was has not had its warmth fade entirely.

 

“I have business to attend.” He states, sliding on his leather vambraces. “You need not do anything you don’t want for today but get some fresh air at least.”

 

He almost makes as if to say more, but it passes, and Loki is once again alone.

 

\---

 

Loki does as he was told and wanders the garden grounds aimlessly. He prefers the parts that are unkempt and untamed, follows where the marble goes from classical and austere to cracked and worn. The scenery is lush and dreamlike, but he is merely passing through.

 

There’s a ruined fountain, intrepid plants growing into its cracks, no water of which to give it purpose. However, it’s the central figurine that gives him pause. She had been so piously carved, tilted body a curvature at every point of pivot, as if in mid-turn. Her arms raised a shallow basin, from which water was supposed to pour – starting from the line of her shoulders, to the turn of her torso, to the spin at her waist, and finally the twist of her heel.

 

It was Skuld, the youngest of the Norns, drawing water from the Well of Uror. Joining together the concepts of fore ordinance and fate. Here she was, crumbling.

 

Loki sits down at the edge of the fountain, seeking audience.

 

In their surroundings, ever the dilapidating paradise, he considered himself a casualty of war, but he wanted to ask her why. What were the Jotuns to them? To so apathetically decide their futures. Were the Norns truly three beings entwined as one in mind and spirit, or one with three faces of being? If duplicity is a quality of being only two-faced, what then? Can one, such as himself, feel cheated? Did he have that right? Tragedy was not unique to him after all, upon a world tree with so many forsaken souls.

 

And why. Why did death and ecstasy conjoin on the very same individual?

 

He humbles himself before the lone ancient goddess available. He observes her observing him: eyes flat and blank, but real. For a long while, they let the heavy quiet settle.

 

The shadows shift in their course. He decides to depart. Conquered and culpable, he moved like a ghost through the trees and flowers. Their majesty not for him.

 

There were no answers here.

 

\---

 

The next few days pass in much the same.

 

Loki was fading and Thor knew it.

 

\---

 

Thus it’s not without some degree of nervousness that he tries this. Had the day planned out especially for it. Dresses for the occasion with a bit more pizzazz. Fandral would’ve been proud of his shoulder capelet. Or else made fun of him for it.

 

Loki’s eyes narrow, knowing he is up to something, returning to their rooms so early in the morning dressed like he’s going somewhere. The gleam in his eyes suggesting they drag Loki with them.

 

“No.”

 

“Have you—”

 

Loki stuffs his face in his embroidered pillow.

 

Thor visibly deflates. Then he remembers himself. “You’ve never even tried.”

 

Voice muffled, “If you knew that, then why bother asking.”

 

He crosses his arms, “You don’t know that you won’t enjoy it.”

 

Loki turns his face slightly and glares at him with one eye. “And you don’t know the ways I’ll make you regret it.”

 

“I’ll take that chance.” All bravado, and hoists Loki up by the arm before he can further sink into the bed. He drags him to the vanity and seats him down, pushing a comb into his hands. “Come on, get dressed.”

 

Loki stares at his reflection, surly.

 

\---

 

He does his hair half up half down. It was simple and would keep the front of it out of his face. The rest he dresses as unsuitably as possible. Since Thor was fitted, trim, and sharp, Loki goes for flowing, layered, and loose. Unfortunately, given the wardrobe that he was dealt, he still comes out looking quite nice for all his attempts at sabotage. His outfit consists of a dozen layers of white chiffon, each so transparently fine that you could easily fold it into a size lengthwise enough to pass through the circumference of a ring, altogether creating an opaque whole that teased the form and shade of his skin tone. If not enough to be maddening, at least it will keep him cool under Asgard’s daylight.

 

Thor doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he just stares openly before clearing his throat. “Yes, this way.”

 

He leads them towards the royal stables. There, a stable boy was in the middle of dressing Thor’s steed with a silver and jeweled faceplate. The creature was a flawless white from his ear tip to his tail strands. Undeniably handsome, just like his owner, the paragon of its species. The stallion was broad, heavily muscled, and of course, Loki had seen it galloping through the snow like it was a mild breeze when Thor rode in on the invasion of Jotunheim. The beast was capable of crushing his head underneath the weight of his hoof he was sure. It snorts a hot breath of air at him and Loki takes a step back.

 

“I’d rather not. Really.”

 

Thor chuckles and pats the neck of his horse. His mane was done in waterfall braids, coat a fine platinum sheen. “Don’t worry, Alban is mine.” And pulls himself up onto the saddle upon the step of a stirrup.

 

The stable boy returns with a mare of much less intimidating build for him. She nickers lightly as he brings her before Loki. “This is Paloma. She’s the best trained and most well-tempered. We’ve had her since she was a filly. She’ll be great for a beginner.” Alban nuzzles Paloma gently, as if to confirm his master’s endorsement.

 

She is, naturally, also beauty epitomized. Her color was a deep chestnut with the shine of bronze and lustre of copper. Her hair flowed freely and was matched to the pale champagne diamond on her muzzle. She seemed gentle and waited upon Loki’s consent.

 

Yet still he hesitates. The only riding he’s ever done was on his brothers’ shoulders.

 

Thor’s smile falters.

 

He could command it, but instead he asks. “Please.”

 

_Let me try at least._

 

There was a hopeless sweetness to it. Thor attempting something earnestly. It will all be for nothing in the end, but Loki can allow him an afternoon of leniency.

 

He nods, warily. Thor’s smile beams like the sun.

 

\---

 

Loki’s mare is dressed with a double bridle. There’s little he has to do other than hold on to one pair of reins, steady, while Thor leads with the other. So far, he has not fallen off and they have left the courtyard. He studies the way Thor controls his mount: kicks to hasten, steers to direct, and draws back to stop. He leads them through the back of the palace, on a path with as much privacy as possible. Profoundly, Loki realizes this is the furthest he’s ever been allowed outside.

 

Once they are outside the palace walls, Loki lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Body instantly easing into the rhythm of Paloma’s gait, finally able to take in the new perspective’s setting.

 

“Where are we going?” he asks.

 

“Anywhere you’d like.” Thor replies, looking back.

 

Loki’s heart rate quickens. “Somewhere I can’t see the city. And faster.” He adds.

 

Thor raises an eyebrow, surprised at his initiative, but is ultimately happy to guide both their steeds to a trot. It was better, but still not enough to have the wind go through his hair in a cool savour. So he copies what Thor does – lightly kicks the sides of Paloma to accelerate. She does so effortlessly, bringing herself to a light canter and nicks playfully at Alban’s braid when they’re side by side, both horses taking the cue to give into greater abandon. It seems they already know where the open grasslands are.

 

Thor looks over to him, Loki’s expression clearer and more honest in days. Tension in him releases with relief. Riding could do that like nothing else, and it has never failed him.

 

Paloma has always been every rider’s dream, offering frictionless trips with uncanny consideration towards her rider and their level of skill, but it seemed that Loki himself had in him the beginnings of a talented equestrian. “You’re not so bad at this.” He compliments.

 

And no, Thor wasn’t imagining it. A smile was on those lips. The spark of a challenge in those eyes. “Care to race?”

 

He blinks. “Don’t let it get to your head now. I’ve been riding for centuries.”

 

It wasn’t. Loki was just interested in testing limits. To walk up to the line and toe where it was drawn. A mighty beast such as this was made for nothing else, and anything less was a pitiful injustice. He’s heard of the tales of how ice wolves perish – not of the cold, but from running so fast until their hearts give out and their spirits join in on gale wind speeds, free from a body that can no longer keep up with its will. He wonders if horses are the same.

 

“Then you have nothing to fear.” And snaps Paloma’s reigns into a gallop. Briefly gaining the lead.

 

Alban neighs and catches up, hooves a thundering beat against the plains.

 

Of all the ways Thor expected this trip to go, he hadn’t actually thought Loki would’ve been _good_ at it. The Jotun was intuitively picking up horse riding at his first try, more easily than he had any logical right to be.

 

As if reading his mind, Loki kicks the mare’s sides to go faster still. Maintain momentum at a good enough speed straight and it would keep your person from sliding. Lean your upper body down for smoother aerodynamics and it would also preserve centre of gravity. Lift your seat from the saddle to prevent rebound from the powerful kicks while bracing hard with your legs.

 

It wasn’t so bad.

 

_How strong is your instinct to run I wonder. Is it as strong as mine?_

 

Thor was an expert rider, that was true, but his warhorse was bred for strength and stamina more than speed, and its mass hinders it more than it would’ve otherwise, the oxygen demand to all that muscle more taxing. Paloma does not have the same limitations, and while gentle natured, was still an animal that found freedom in the wind and the wild. Gradually, but surely, he pulls ahead in the pursuit: destination as wide as the horizon before him upon a land of flowing green, the exhilaration akin to flight. No. Desperation.

 

To go and never turn back. He leans closer to Paloma’s neck. His attire billows behind him like air currents spun from silk.

 

The wind on his face isn’t cold enough. He’ll run them off the edge of this damned realm if he must.

 

The tall grass parting in their wake like a blade cleaving the earth in two.

 

Faster…

 

Faster.

 

_Faster._

 

Thor curses. Unable to make up the distance and fear very much making itself known. What Loki didn’t know about the terrain was that they were on the lip of a valley. Not much further was the downward slope. The speed at which he was going made it outright dangerous to rip ahead, and if they fell…Loki could be injured under Paloma’s weight and Paloma could break her legs.

 

“Loki stop!”

 

The torque forces him to tear back the reins. Paloma rearing to a stop at the suddenness, panicked into instability, front legs kicking in the air.

 

Loki is thrown off. His steed galloping away after losing its rider.

 

He gasps at the impact of landing, curling to his side. Thankfully the soft grass did well to cushion his fall, and he rolls over to support himself on all fours, eyes staring blankly at the unmoving ground underneath.

 

“Loki!”

 

Thor dismounts and hurries to his side, eyebrows knit in worry. “Are you alright?”

 

A laugh bubbles past Loki’s lips as he staggers up to his feet. “I’m fine. See?”

 

Thor frowns – if Loki would only stay still enough to have him check -

 

“You were right Thor, that was fun. Let’s do it again.” But Paloma is out of sight, has run away.

 

Thor tries to move in front of him to catch his attention. “You’re in no condition to do so.”

 

Loki shoves past him, towards Alban. “Let me go.”

 

The stallion nervously dances out of his grasp however, as Loki tries to catch on the reins. He’s also much too tall to get on without assistance. Thor reels him in at the waist. “Loki. Stop. No.”

 

He tries to twist Thor’s hands off him, foolhardy attempting to reach the saddle and put his foot in a stirrup.

 

Instead, the very opposite happens when Thor drags him down to pacify him on the ground. “You’re distraught.”

 

_Distraught?_

 

How _dare_ he? When _he_ was the one who insisted on this outing, which had been going as well as any could ask for. He struggles in his frustration and pitches his weight to the side in a roll, trying to wrest away.

 

Thor would have none of it and just rolled them again so that he came out on top.

 

“Let.”

 

Another.

 

“Me.”

 

Another.

 

“Go.”

 

And they go tumbling down in a flurry of limbs and grass.

 

The world around them is going in circles, upside down, rightside up. Again and again. Thor and Loki’s angry gazes are locked onto each other in the struggle.

 

Their momentum stops at the dip of the valley and it’s Loki who comes out on top. Hips straddling the Odinson’s waist, body leaning forth towards him – those had been done; it’s his hands around Thor’s neck that’s new.

 

He repeats it again, in a quiet that’s nearer to a whisper. “Let me go.”

 

Thor watches him, transfixed, but calm. It would have been so easy. All he had to do was press the thumbs in and place pressure on the windpipe, but the torque around his neck is heated like a brand, and he cannot.

 

He sees Thor through a veil of water.

 

Thor’s hands grab his wrists like the knot of a noose.

 

“Was this meant to be courtship Thor?”

 

The first tear he has allowed himself to shed, falls. “Don’t fool yourself.”

 

To hold on any longer would be to burn. He let’s go and rises.

 

It had been sunny and bright moments ago. Now the skies are leaden.

 

Loki was going to walk away from this fight. Was going to hand over his loss. But Thor doesn’t want it. It’s the first time in his life he hasn’t wanted to win. Not like this. Not when he knows there are more tears than that.

 

But he doesn’t know what to do. He can already see Loki retreating into himself. “Things can change.” He insists, unsure if he’s heard.

 

Until Loki repeats it, numbly. “Things can change.” He looks at the grass, as if it may tell him how.

 

When he turns to look at him it’s as if he’s just realizing where Thor is again. “Why not toss me in a cell and be done with it?”

 

Then he amends.

 

“Why _didn’t_ you toss me in a cell and be done with it?”

 

If that question had been posed in the beginning, Thor would have coldly backhanded Loki across the face and told him to present himself contrite at his master’s feet for not fully appreciating his generosity.

 

Now…his fist clenches and unclenches in shame.

 

The scent of ozone thickens as clouds roll in. Static charges the air around them, between them. Thor’s presence fills his senses and dominates his existence. His jaw is tense, and his muscles are straining with the crackle of elemental spillover energy. Between wrestling with trying to contain it or else with his own conscience, Thor is losing control of both.

 

But he answers truthfully, Loki’s owed that much. “I wanted you to internalize the difference between Jotunheim and Asgard, how much more superior of a realm your house ought to have ceded to long ago. I wanted you to live with the fear of what was given that could have as easily been taken away at any moment.”

 

Loki’s eyes close and tears stream down.

 

“Your submission, more than claiming the Casket of Ancient Winters, or winning the war, was the crown jewel of Asgard’s empire.”

 

Something breaks in both of them, and then it begins to rain.

 

The beginning of a familiar beat: pitter patter. So often it had played to the theme of the hero igniting a fight, until the downpour increased, violently beating down and shrouding both of them in sheets, eroding at his heart.

 

Mjolnir hangs heavy on his belt.

 

“I no longer want those things.”

 

Admission, like guilt, tasted acrid in the back of his throat. There was little to rejoice in the turn of events. Everything but perhaps one.

 

But at least…

 

“I spared your life.”

 

“You stole my death.”

 

Those words like a slap to the face at the first clap of thunder. He understands that Loki is still grieving, but he cannot possibly want what it suggests. Furthermore, Thor will not grant it.

 

To keep him, to preserve him: that was all he wanted now.

 

“No.”

 

Loki barks a laugh, hysterical, just the grandest joke of all. “That’s right. Such nuances in distinction hardly matter do they.”

 

“That’s –”

 

“So long as it’s not _beyond_ your infantile and belligerent notions of right and wrong, or sheer entitlement!”

 

Thor closes the distance between them and clamps a hand around his wrist, bruising, as Loki pulls back, writhing in his grasp, trying to work with the added fraction of slipperiness the water lends, but it’s still no use. Loki struggles blindly through his tears and the low visibility, futile. He’s soaked through.

 

They slip and fall to join dirt and grass, and the pelting rain already there. Loki’s expression of fury does not change between flashes of lightning.

 

Thor growls at him, “Anything else.”

 

He boosts his chin, voice turning low and eyes burning into Thor’s. “Then I want you to know the cost of your conquest, to see this cloth dyed red with it. Don’t you dare be gentle.”

 

Fine. If Loki wanted it to subside, then Thor could give him pain enough to pervade past apathy. If anything, Thor wanted a good, hard fight. However, he’s inclined to think that even if he only allows Loki to apply his physical strength, that he will fight dirty. So instead, he’ll settle for a good, hard fuck.

 

Grass clinging to Loki’s hair.

 

Petrichor clinging to his skin.

 

Fabric as substantial as nothing clinging to his body.

 

Thor wants to take him, have him, seep into him.

 

Wants to belong to him, understand him, know him.

 

It its place, he grabs a thigh, roughly pushing it open with one hand and working himself free with the other. Words fail him, but not Loki.

 

“I hate you.”

 

And there it was. Anger pure and alive. He’ll take it. He’ll take anything but Loki’s impassivity.

 

“You should.” and knifes in with his thrust just as Loki surges forward with teeth.

 

It cannot break the skin, and even without the torque’s protective bindings, Thor would not easily bruise. But Loki gasps into his mouth. It’s not the stretch that hurts. It’s that one moment Thor is merely on top of him, and the next he is inside him.

 

They fuck in contest to see who can draw blood first.

 

Thor has him so hard that Loki can feel the burn of the ground on his back. He clenches himself as tight as he can around the Thunderer’s shaft to make this as harsh as possible. Thor’s nails dig into his ankle where the skin was thinnest on the area right above the side of the heel. Pries him open for his stubbornness. Thor’s cock then continues to split him apart, the falling rain making for scant lubricant.

 

Thor grunts and snarls above him while Loki hisses and sneers beneath. Louder than that is the slamming of hips. Even louder than that is the thunder above. Alighting them are flashes of lightning that rend the sky. Loki can see every droplet as it collects into Thor’s blond locks, falls into his eyes, drips down the tip of his nose, before losing purchase to splash onto his face, sliding down the corner of his eyes. His own are hot and bitter.

 

He wants to keep this feeling of hatred putting up a fight. Knows that it could sustain him. The thunder resonates in his breastbone and his heart beats like drumfire. The storm crushing them just as much as Thor’s body weight.

 

It rains so hard that Thor is thrusting Loki into the wet muck of the previously dry ground, but neither of them care. It rains so hard that raindrops bounce with the force of it around them like raw forces seething. Droplets fly up to meet droplets falling, until it looks like the two planes of nature are disintegrating into one.

 

Droplet by droplet, bead by bead, molecule by molecule.

 

After perhaps an age, almost imperceptibly, anger washes away in the downpour to that of weary disdain, drenching them only in the closeness of their bodies. The clash of their positioning no longer a tactile weapon, just the blunt impact of flesh.

 

Yet it didn’t matter how close they became physically. That ensorcelled piece of metal would always be between them.

 

_Without the torque I cannot keep you. With it I cannot embrace you._

 

Was it sweat or rain water that made its way down his straining arm muscles? Thor doesn’t know, but he’ll not last much longer, so he makes his case.

 

His breath quickens with his pace, and he fixes Loki’s face with his own, forehead to forehead, brow to brow, eye to eye.  

 

“Earn my trust and I’ll take it off.”

 

If he didn’t say it so near, Loki would’ve missed it in the hammering of his hips and the deluge the clouds continue to dump. The words were clear though, unbroken by his movements, and Loki is all the more surprised for it.

 

“Swear it.”

 

“I swear.”

 

And seals his word with the white-hot spill of seed.

 

\---

 

The day after an intense storm was always a good one. Loki goes out on horseback once more. _‘As long as you ride safe, you may do so during the day.’_ he said.

 

Paloma had been nervous in her stable when she saw him, but he apologized after taking some time to stroke her velveteen muzzle. He promised not to be so reckless and she seemed to understand that he meant it.

 

They return to the same sweet grassy meadow.

 

The cool breeze sifts through his limbs, and he can think clearly again after the world had already slipped away. It’s too early to say whether he’s been absolved by the rain, reminded that he is not the only thing that matters.

 

He’s drawn to where the wind blows over the tall grass, surface like an undulating wave, taking him further out. A green sea that shimmers along his legs and sways flirtatiously in the wind where a bird’s song is caught on the current.

 

Song is perhaps the wrong description, but he steers Paloma to follow it.

 

They come to a creature with a broken wing, blown to somewhere unfamiliar if the frantic cast of its call in every direction was indication. Paloma’s ears turn at the small but shrill metal whistling and she flicks her tail. It doesn’t stop, not even upon their presence as Loki dismounts to take a closer look.

 

Its marked striations gave it the impression of something pierced with worry, perched on the stalk of a reed. He was amazed that something so tiny could produce a voice so clear with a bill open as wide as it could.

 

A vagrant.

 

It called on end for another of its species. For a mate? For its brood?

 

Pitching its call to all points, head turning capriciously and small throat quivering with sound, Loki watched as it sang unabated. Notes of desperation a constant stream. He listened and felt his own heart contract.

 

This creature once had a plan, mapped on instinct by a cell-deep genetic drive, only to still be adrift.

 

Insects lie in the dark of the soil, waiting until the day to emerge, exact to the year since their last periodicity. Birds migrated upon the wing for the first time on a course they’ve never traveled, sure of their destination. Fish swam out to sea back to their birthplace to lay their eggs, despite not having been there since infancy and making the trip in reverse.

 

They were both vagrants.

 

He takes the delicate thing gently in hand. It quiets but does not still with the way he can feel its heart beat through its feathers, enclosing it to his chest.

 

He had once so longed for the certainty that was the natural world order, even with its constraints, never thinking of the devastation it could bring when the so-called certainty unraveled. What was the use of a blueprint if you could not follow it? To be on a section so far uncharted on the map that you could not reorient it?

 

Where could he find conviction in such a loss?

 

_Earn my trust._

 

There was hopefully such a thing as a home and heart that changed with you.

 

Thus, may you be astray but never lost.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alban is latin for white, and Paloma is spanish for Dove. Because I'm a sap like that. Aaand, that completes the first arc!! Reading this chapter and then re-reading chapter 1 almost brings a tear to my eye. Let me know if it did for you too.


	11. Chapter 11

 

 

The bird is a delicate creature capable of sitting in the palm of his hand had it been twice its size, and for a long time Thor simply stares, not because he has never seen one before, but that it should be here.

 

“I did not know you wanted a pet.”

 

Loki is not particularly occupied, but neither does he explain its enigmatic conjuring. Such a simple thing perched strangely still.

 

“I brought it for its song.”

 

Yet Thor has not heard a peep. It does not look like a songbird to him. Its body shape was more to a sparrow, and its coloration a soft brown gradient, fading into rust red, on its cheeks a white patch the size of a lady’s thumbnail. It was nothing of magnificence, but.

 

“Finding a cage should be simple.”

 

Loki does not look back to address him. Does not act as if they are speaking of topics other than the outfitted clothes of today or anything that might bring them even tangentially to recent events. “My intentions are not to keep it.”

 

Ever the cipher, Thor is left to curiosity, but then, it is a small matter.

 

“I’ve-“ he doesn’t understand why he’s nervous, “I’ve brought you something.” clearing his throat. Loki looks to scrutinize him, and then it’s his turn to stare at the book Thor’s holding, not because he has never seen one before, but that it should be there.

 

“I did not know you read.”

 

Thor grimaces. Inwardly. Perhaps that was deserved. It’s not as if he knew particularly how to pick a subject matter in an area he has never cared for, and less that he knows how to discern what might be those of greatest interest, and so he chose one based off what was familiar.

 

Loki’s hand brushes over the leather cover, decorated with a celtic, gold emboss roundel, before thumbing through the pages. It wasn’t a large tome, but the writing was dense and academic. He raises an eyebrow at the descriptions and drawings, some of them, towards the end of the volume, more like that of blueprints. “The Bifrost?”

 

Misjudging Loki’s tone and thinking this all to be a mistake, Thor tries to snatch it back “If you’re not interested—”

 

Only for the text-starved Jotun to pull back reflexively with the item that may, for once, among all the useless materialism he’s surrounded by, offer him some sort of intellectual diversion. “I didn’t say that.”

 

Thor frowns. “You didn’t seem pleased either.”

 

Loki keeps his tongue in check. _I don’t suppose you might have anything on the melting properties of dwarven metal?_

 

“It will do.” tone insistent.

 

Trying not to put too much stock in the gesture, one way or the other, he relents. “Alright.”

 

“For now.” Loki is quick to add and puts it down on the nearby table. Trying not to seem…

 

They both avoid each other’s eyes, thinking that the other ought to have something to say on the matter. Thor didn’t think past what entailed handing the book over. That somehow all the secrets of the universe would find a new master in Jotunheim’s small seidr user, but who knows. Maybe the two realms were too dissimilar, and, like given something in another language, be completely incomprehensible. As for Loki, the book on the Bifrost was something of a disappointment, having entertained other subject matters of magic he knew to be available and yet inaccessible…if only he had the choice of selection. Instead, magical Asgardian architecture was one of the lower ranking inquiries, and yet…

 

He settles on “Let me know when you’ve finished.” One hand finding the other arm’s elbow.

 

Loki simply nods.

 

“I’ll uhm, I’ll—” Idunn’s apples, this should not have been so awkward “see you in the evening.” He forces out in a rush.

 

“Yes, that is…customary.” Loki concurs, for lack of a better word.

 

And then Thor quickly leaves the rooms before any more needs to be said. Loki sighs a breath of relief. It was still only morning.

 

\---

 

The political meeting promised to be long and agonizing, as all those were seated around the diplomacy table. Recent events had disrupted and destabilized everyone’s bureaucratic agenda so that now all ministers were behind in their discussions, and so everyone convened together. Given the nature of the lot however, and adding to that, high positions mingled with lesser, this was to be an unpleasant, though necessary assemblage.

 

Odin takes up his authority at the head of the round table with his scribe and note keeper beside him. Thor remembered Jorundr always for his quill’s shape. He was a traditional and austere individual, and it showed even in his stylus.  Only the tip end of the slender feather blade remained on the shaft, for he was not one to be distracted by the added weight or motion of a large wavy one. He presided over the consultation of Asgard’s laws as well, but recent decades saw very few new ones made.

 

Thor took a seat to the right of his father and listened for the telltale scratches of the nib moving across parchment. The pause and continuation of its rhythm. Somehow, looking at the man and his stern concentration, he doesn’t think Jorundr’s ever made a spelling mistake even once. He had the sharp aquiline face of a scholar, but the type of which, if he ever had students, would have intimidated them upon entrance, though he never raised his voice.

 

He wrote down those in attendance, which was to say, apart from the main ranks seated at the central table, also featured younger legislators and councilmen. Should they have input their elders did not. Jorundr handed a report to Odin, and he looked it over before returning it, finally starting.

 

He was blunt. “We cannot wait for the investigation to be finalized before deciding on the treaty’s renewal. Given Svartalfheim’s leverage, instead we must negotiate for a clause that prevents Vanaheim from accepting trade. The two realms have contrasting styles of magics, but not incompatible, and a melded brand of seidr will prove serious.”

 

Fenwen is the first to comment “Your majesty, then you play into their plots! Have you forgotten their conspiracy? If we accept another pact then we embolden their desire for influence.”

 

From the way his father looked to the side before answering, Thor could tell that they’ve had this debate before, and had not come a step closer to resolving it. Thor himself, is not altogether certain how things should proceed, but his brow furrows in remembrance and concern.

 

Vern chuckled, seeming amused “Why not buy time with one then until the investigation is concluded?” It need not be a long one. A year or two.” He was Asgard’s treasurer and saw all problems as well as their solutions as they pertained to what could be bought and paid for, even if coin was not the currency in question.

 

Odin replied as one who has taken these options into consideration before, “Perhaps, but we are anticipating that evidence is not on hand and might not be no matter how long we look. In which case, the time that’s bought will serve little but to delay us when mitigation is needed most.”

 

And so round and round they went. No one was reliably able to give much input of value. Peace seemed to be the goal, but very few were invested in attaining it. Either that or they did not understand the threat. Neither did Thor, if he were being completely honest. Throughout the increasingly heated exchanges, he couldn’t help but feel that his father knew more than the others, but if he did then it did not help, and if he didn’t then he had dwindling faith his ministers would be able to enlighten him.

 

At some point Jorundr had set down his quill and not picked it up again. Everyone’s objections were treading the same trodden ground and no one was swayed from their original stance.

 

He wonders…what Loki would have thought of it all.

 

“THAT’S ENOUGH.” His father shouts. Ending the spat that was about to start up between Kjarr and Brandt. Hot-headed and uncreative generals that had a hard time coming up with anything that did not have a precedent.  

 

“I’d dismiss you all but were it not for other matters that also require going over. The past two hours may be written off, but I’ll not lose more than that.” and leans back into his chair, tired.

 

Rangvald, head of agriculture, gave a summation of what to expect from this cycle’s harvest, with the prediction that Idunn’s orchard would be as reliably productive as ever. This transitioned to trade – the surplus that could be sold, to which regions and realms, and at what prices.

 

Gradually, it moves into early afternoon, and everyone is weary. Different generals vie for supplies and coffers, wanting all at the same time to accelerate recruitment. _This is what happens when you have five of them._ Thor thought to himself, surly. Fenwen was the most vocal. He was in charge of the soldiers for palace guards, which included the prisons. Asgard’s palace must always be safely guarded, and she kept many prisoners after all. At the end of it, Fenwen still comes out of the discourse with the largest funds, but at smaller margins than years previous.

 

The highest priority issues covered, they go down the list to smaller affairs, those less and less domestic. Deservedly or not, the last was Jotunheim.

 

Talks were unsatisfactory to the other party where they left off. Which was some time ago. It seemed no one had deemed it important to immediately resume after the flurry of drama that had happened here. And Jotunheim, with no ties to other realms to bolster it, had been left cold.

 

Many of the councilmen, antsy to be dismissed, shifted in their seats or straightened their stiff backs. They talk of aid in dismissive charity. Supplies are scantly surrendered. It’s the optics more than the impact that matter. A comment on the amount of food passes with no revisions.

 

“Triple it.”

 

Jorundr raises his eyes at that. Thor’s aware that the room has refocused on him. “It would not be a strain, considering the surplus.”

 

Vern laughs, his double chin wobbling. “And you are not speaking out of any personal biases are you?”

 

He was prepared for such an accusation, expected it even. “I am simply thinking of insurgencies in the region. It would be more trouble down the line if such dissatisfaction and contempt breeded rebellion. I’m sure you can agree that sparing additional warriors to quash such future clashes would be a waste of lives for very little gain.”

 

“Yes but...while surplus is defined as what’s left over after the stores are filled to their capacity, it does not mean that it can not have better uses elsewhere. The profits made from it would more than account for, erm, at least a dozen infantry units.”

 

Thor interjected, not fully able to disguise his frustration. It was useless to engage with Vern on anything like the concept of valued lives, he learned that long ago. “You assume being able to afford is the same as having supply. Asgardian birth rates are not that high and combat-ready men in their prime are not an endless resource. It takes _time_.”

 

Vern dealt with accountants all day. In his eyes, everyone and anything could be reduced to numbers, except those higher ranking, and as Thor studied those beetle eyes, he thought he could hear the mental calculations being done to him as well. Vern was forgetting his place.

 

“Pardon my pointing out a small matter, but you’ve been quite the spendthrift yourself, your highness. Much of the surplus goes to keeping the higher classes comfortable, a comfort that if suddenly, drastically reduced, may cause some dissatisfaction among your own dignitaries, all playing much more important roles guarding the realms.”

 

To think he was being met with this much resistance over _grain_. To say nothing of the battle that could of been had he proposed to do so over meat.

 

“I’ve heard enough to weigh Thor’s concerns to be of greater stress. If the effects are truly felt, we can haggle with some of our wealthier trading partners over price increases.”

 

Jorundr scribbled down the missive. Vern shrugged good-humoredly, forcing a chuckle.

 

It wasn’t a difficult issue by any means, but it was one that would have easily languished otherwise. This was just one of many would be comparatively small concerns… how many more were there, Jotunheim besides?

 

But his mental capacities are spent for the day. Everyone else leaves in order of rank, except for Odin and Thor. Father and son before any title. In the back of his mind he knows this, he just isn’t sure how much Odin trusts him… Waiting a word with his father, he lets Jorundr to finish his notetaking before the other man respectfully departs with memorized formality.

 

Odin raises his eyebrow, and in the newfound silence, Thor feels at the same time that he has something to be ashamed about, skirting the line between asking his own father, just shy of accusation, over—

 

“The point you brought up was a good one Thor, only that Vern will seek from you, in the future, something to compensate. As long as your debts to him are never more than a handful of deficits however, he should be easily placated. Working with him is more often like agreeing a balance sheet.”

 

Thor nods and accepts the praise. After any other political meeting he would have glowed at hearing it, but today the matter is secondary. He opens his mouth to speak again, only to be interrupted.

 

“Were your reasons for bringing it up truly as unaffected as you claim however, judging by the one you keep, Thor?”

 

And now it’s him on the defensive, twice over, but Odin’s eye is much more discerning and even though he knows he was in the right, his authority is always second to the King’s.

 

“Yes father.” He swallows. “I would never put Asgard’s interests below another’s.” he answers as honestly as he can. He didn’t think of it as asking or taking too much, truly.

 

Odin studies and rolls up scrolls one by one, “Rather recently I recall, that one was quite the talented seidr user, was it not?”

 

Thor’s heart sinks.

 

“Have I not your faith in my ability to control those at my discretion?” after the war on Jotunheim, Thor thought his victory was proof enough of his leadership and command.

 

Odin sighed, gesturing to both Huginn and Muninn where they had been roosting in the rafters. Thor had almost forgotten they were they until they swoop down. He thought he saw his father’s shoulders sag with their weight. He doesn’t know how much the other has seen.

 

“My son, when it comes to your heart, you have always been resolute. It’s only should it sway that I worry. Do not let recent events cloud your judgement, no matter what you may feel in retrospect. When you are king, your actions are made righteous. There need no guilt in that.”

 

Odin makes his way to the door before leaving with a final word “His magic is a clever and capable thing. Do not give more allowances than you already have, Thor.”

 

He hears the warning as if struck by his father’s own hand. Dumbfounded, he doesn’t know what to say. Various ways of broaching the subject and he has not managed to voice a single one of them. It seems Odin has put the matter to rest already.

 

Yet before his father, Thor can only obey.

 

\---

 

Loki looks up from the book in his lap when Thor returns. He’d lost track of time and with Thor back, he will be expected to escort and serve at the evening dining hall. He starts unbuttoning to change when Thor stops him, voice sounding weary. “Nevermind that.” He pauses mid motion and looks at Thor, slightly questioning.

 

“I shall head out tonight with friends. It’s been a while. Some carousing won’t be amiss. You may…tend to your own needs as they arise.” Looking past Loki as he said so.

 

If Thor wanted to be alone with his thoughts, then far be it for Loki to stop him or worse, get dragged along. “The light travelling cape then?” And indeed, he’ll help him get dressed out the door.

 

“It will do.” Thor replies, not really caring.

 

\---

 

The comforts of a mead hall are always the same. Identities were muted, and Thor’s royalty was not the spectacular thing it usually was obscured by the golden aura that was honeyed drink being poured amongst a rich atmosphere of glazed inebriation. He had forgotten how much he missed it and how long he had been away until he, Fandral, and Hogun are smashing tankards while opposite an arm-wresting Sif and Volstagg. A well needed laugh bubbles past Thor’s lips before it is lost to the froth of spillover drink that he laps up from the rim.

 

“Good of you to finally turn up again. I was starting to wonder when I might be called upon to go a knocking on your door.”

 

“Speak for yourself, Fandral.” Sif grunts, leading her opponent by a thirty-degree angle. Looking at Volstagg, he was unsure whether his friend’s red face was from drink or exertion. He continues drinking in quizzical cheer.

 

“Just a small wager on when you’d take up your old ways. Volstagg was beginning to think you a changed man.”

 

Thor tried not to turn too sharply. Hogun was slightly slumped against his side and had tipped his cup upside-down in depressing fashion when there was no more. “What do you mean?” lightly laughing along.

 

“Not exactly,” Volstagg grunted, trying with lessening chances to turn back the slant of his forearm. “I just said that his Jotun was rather gamine, but probably possessed more stamina than most other delicate Aesir women.”

 

Sif declares her victory by the thump of his hand on the back of the wooden table, and takes a wide swig in celebration. “Honestly, the way you talk about women sometimes. I’ll send you slinking back home for it.”

 

Thor pieces together that his close circle had a bet going on about…? “Just don’t take the red-head tonight, please Thor, you’re always stealing my first picks.” He whispers in Thor’s ear while keeping his eye on the full-figured barmaid making her rounds.

 

Thor’s chuckle dies nervously. That was not, that had not been—

 

But what did he expect the others would think? He suddenly soberly thinks upon his history of merrymaking. The way that long nights transitioned into sleepless ones, before sleeping in long into the morning after, waking up with a naked leg thrown over and the press of a lady’s body beside him.

 

His friends thought he was out for a lay.

 

Well, then, maybe he ought to. He was Thor Odinson after all. A good roll was expected and easily offered. He had favourites in this hall, and they always hovered in their service, even after many of the regulars retired. Maybe he could find some proper distraction for once. A pair of eyes that would look at him longingly, of which when he stared into he would not be reminded of his identity when he saw himself reflected.

 

Yes…yes, there might be some worth to the idea. Loki was not his keeper. Certainly did not hold his romps in reserve. Thor starts scouring the room for girls of his selection. Fandral could have the red-head, her tits were too large—though he loved buxom lasses usually, just not tonight—

 

“My lord, would you like a refill?” comes the voice of one he didn’t notice approaching. He nods dumbly, regarding her. She’s of a good height to his, possessed a slender figure without being waifish, and as she leaned over, strands of her long dark hair fell between them.

 

He makes to brush them back and tuck behind her ear, unconsciously. Fandral sniggers and playfully nudges him with his elbow.

 

She blushed a little at the strangely intimate gesture, bashfulness turning into excitement however as her eyes meet his in invitation, smiling promising him things without needing to be said. Thor has missed this kind of beckoning. He pulls her into his lap and feels the weight of her thighs on his.

 

Their faces come awful close, noses almost brushing. She sought him out, surely then, she meant to take good care of him. “My prince, you look tired. A night of drinking has not eased the tension. I fear for the reputation of this tavern.”

 

Thor can tell exactly where this is going, welcomes it even. “Are you concerned with the reputation of this tavern, or mine?” This wasn’t what he’d originally intended, but it’d be a respite to let drink lead him. Even if she wasn’t his usual, who was he to now apply standards?

 

Deciding with a kind of vicious finality, he meets the girl’s lips with his own as she cupped his face. The frantic kissing is all tongue and teeth, with none of the regular finesse that Thor prides himself on. He tells himself he wants this, and then he ceases to think at all.

 

\---

 

Loki rubbed his temple. The words on the page were beginning to blur together. As well, he’s felt hungry for quite some time now. He cannot ignore his body’s needs forever. He stands, remembering the route to the kitchens, and chides himself for not bringing food before settling in.

 

He’s never gone this late before. Though there is food, only the simplest items remained. The staff must feed themselves from the leftovers after all, and those in the hall dined long into the evening. No matter. A fruit or bread roll would do. He’s not particularly picky, though recently his sense of taste has begun to return.

 

As he’s returning to Thor’s rooms however, his ears seem to catch on the echo of steps following his in the same direction. At first, given the distance of the sound from his own, he thinks nothing of it. Guards patrolling the corridors were to be expected, but then the treads get closer, and they are not the regimented steps of any soldier with an appreciation for duty.

 

He turns around, half expecting some drunk fool to be lost. When he does, the figure staring him down doesn’t seem drunk, and doesn’t seem lost either. Loki frowns and keeps hard the voice of his displeasure. “If you plead your name and rank, I won’t tell his majesty any worse than your loitering.”

 

The man seems amused at his posturing by the widening grin on his face.

 

It doesn’t bode well that they are alone and that the torch lights flicker low, casting long shadows over the expression of the individual. “If your looking for the dining hall, it’s in the exact opposite direction.”

 

“But that’s where I just left.” and he resumes walking towards him.

 

Loki’s senses are on alert and he starts backing up. Several options run through his head at once. Calling for help with very unlikely odds of actual receiving any. He wants to run, but Thor’s rooms are the only end to this wing and should he be pursued until there… but Thor was out, and where _were_ the guards?

 

The other man makes mocking shushes and croons like Loki’s a timid animal. “There’s no need for that. I won’t hurt you. I merely wanted to ask where your master’s gone. He wasn’t at dinner with the rest of us either, and how strange that his Warriors Three are also gone.”

 

 _How the Hel should he know._ But he keeps his body language meek and unthreatening. “I don’t know, but I expect him back soon.” He hopes. With alarm, his back meets the hard press of a column, and the person catches his chin in hand, eyes looking him over hungrily.

 

“Strange if he were. Our prince, on these kinds of excursions, has never been known to return before having his fill of revelry.” And chuckles to himself. “Though one has to wonder why he’s out at all.”

 

Loki would have predicted the scent of wine about him, but it seems this one’s been sober. With a rapidly sinking feeling, he wonders how long this one had been waiting for an opportunity like this. It was only a matter of time… Thor could not be with him forever, and he was not ignorant to the way Asgardian men lusted. He swallows, suddenly feeling hot as the man’s hand brushed his jaw slowly.

 

“Has our lord grown bored of you already?” he breathed. “If so, you can spend a night with me little, lonely Jotunn.”

 

_“Should anything happen again when I’m not with you, you may use your seidr in self-defence…”_

 

 _‘So why isn’t the dumb magic kicking in?!’_ he cursed inwardly. He tried to duck underneath an arm caging him against the pillar. The larger man catches him about the waist, laughing almost delightedly at what he considered good fun: running made the inevitability all the sweeter.

 

“Do you play these little games with him too? Does he chase you down before having his way?” grinning sadistically and echoing the description by his own actions: one arm restraining Loki on the floor and the other using his hand to stroke him through his breeches. Loki’s head spins in revulsion and the hardening cock through the fabric.

 

But then a yawning knot, loosening on his magic registers through the panic. _‘Force, the torque interprets the condition as applied force.’_ Realization dawning on him, but now both his wrists are clamped above his head when he needs his hands to direct the blast. The man excitedly worked himself open, getting hard at the thought of rape. Loki squeezed his eyes and tried to force himself calm. The only way his attacker would release his hands was if he let his guard down, and to do so Loki has to cease struggling as hard.

 

The sick laughter rings in his ears “That’s it. It’s more exciting when they fight. Kick and scream pretty thing. I’ve not been this aroused in a long time. I bet you even enjoy it.” His fingers worked their way below the dress and traced his slit. The man shuddered.

 

He evens his breathing though his heart is beating as fast as prey’s. “Please. Just don’t tell my master or anyone else and I promise I’ll keep these affairs a secret.”

 

“Oh?” he expresses in a moment of surprise, grip loosening.

 

Loki takes his chance.

 

And expels a blow to strong enough to send him flying into the wall. The force was less than he wanted-- _“to disarm or incapacitate, but not to kill.”_

 

The man groans and rolls over in pain, alive, but Loki doesn’t stay to find out how angry he is, so he turns heel and runs. He reaches Thor’s rooms and slams the doors shut. He doesn’t make out the sounds of being followed.

 

Nervous and shaky, he slumps into a chair and rides out the rush of adrenaline. Thinking how closely he had averted—if not for Thor’s words, but even with them…

 

Eventually his thoughts exhaust him and the fire burns low. He watches the flames dance, entranced and numb, before falling asleep.

 

\---

 

“Loki?”

 

A rough hand on his shoulder shook him awake and his eyes fly open in a panic. When his sight steadies in the dark, he sees Thor. Has never been more glad in that moment. Thor’s expression knits into worry at the state Loki’s in, garment torn at one shoulder and another at mid thigh.

 

They look at each other like that, dismay and relief.

 

 "What's happened?"

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> All my kinks in one and more. Comments appreciated as always. 
> 
> Sometimes I have further insights on my tumblr.


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